September 2025: Terry Waldron - Oil on Panel

To me, the point of art is transcendence. I don't approach my work self-consciously or thematically. I embrace the fear of the unknown. I don't have a predetermined idea when I begin a painting, nor do I know what the final painting will look like. If the painting appears not to be working, I often attempt to destroy hours and hours’ worth of work out of frustration, and most often that is when it all makes sense. It also takes a certain level of courage. My work is populated with an array of characters, animal figures, ghosts, and symbols painted in flat compositions that nod to folk or naive painting. I attempt to call up the dead, the spirit world, as if to lure it out in hopes of coming face to face with it. Because I have experienced great loss, it only seems possible to express it here in my art. In the end, I’m just trying to figure things out and working towards my own methodologies. I hope that the work connects with shared human experience.