Terri Rolland

Lives and works in Santa Fe, NM, USA

Artist statement

In forty five plus years of making paintings, I've been reducing image and subject toward the formation of an elemental picture. I believe that a painting should provide a visually surprising experience, at once bold and contemplative. I use abstract figuration with almost cartoony images that casually suggest land or monolithic shapes against sky. Employing two or three delineated areas of color, I eliminate psychic noise to build a vibrational optic intensity. Marks and dots and dashes animate the images and allow for another layer or subtle pulsation and movement. I am exploring ideas of monumental shapes and forms, ideas of inner and outer, and new surfaces and marks. For years I searched for a paint material that wasn't toxic and overly refined. This led me to commercial clay wall paint, a material not unlike fresco in its matte luminosity and earthy physicality. It has a humble, honest presence that I want my paintings to embody. I add tints to create saturated colors against a neutral tone to build chromatic vitality, and apply numerous smeared layers with brushes and rubber tools, often further activating the paint by scraping or wiping. The result is a velvety, condensed surface that can seem alternately like flesh, concrete, or tree bark. While my work is steeped in the tradition of abstraction and modernist landscape painting, I also consider my East-Coast, working-class roots and my feminist/butch/queer sensibility to be a major factor in the development of my...

Artwork