David Terry’s drawings and paintings range from evocative landscapes and portraits to intricate, multi-image montages. In addition to Terry’s work in Fine Art, he regularly illustrates for several national magazines and newspapers. Since 1997, he has completed 26 published book covers, many advertising pieces, and numerous privately commissioned works. All of the work is done on paper. Tinting/painting is done with watercolor, pastel pencils, oil pencils, and inks.
While Terry’s rural eastern Tennessee roots are evident in the nature imagery and Southern iconography that permeates his work, his grounding in Literature is perhaps even more apparent. David holds an undergraduate degree in English from the University of the South and post-graduate degrees in Literature from Middlebury (the Bread Loaf School of English) and Duke, with additional graduate studies at Oxford and the University of Virginia.
David Terry first gained attention at the 1994 New Art exhibition at Duke University. Subsequently (not to mention surprisedly), he won an Emerging Artist Grant in 1996 and (since that time) has held many one-man shows in various commercial galleries and otherwise beat a scorching track out of the teaching profession. David Terry is highly aware (ten years after this website was established, and the previous comments written) that it’s more than just slightly creepy to introduce yourself in the third person. I also realize that saying you work for newspapers has become all too much like saying you repair carriage wheels or moonlight in a whale-oil factory in the past ten years.
Visit David Terry’s Art website or Facebook page for additional information and updated offerings.
Good Art: Drawn Right & Sold At Popular Prices. I should begin by emphasizing that (1) If you’re interested in a piece or commissioning a new piece, contact me by emailing dterrydraw@aol.com, or by telephoning (919) 909 9811, and (2) not everything on this page is “Available” (much/most of my work is commissioned), and I should admit that not all of the works are even particularly “Current” (for better or worse, I don’t spend a lot of my days updating this dang thing). All of the following are works-on-paper. All are drawn with pen&ink or (when they’re not) painted with watercolors, pastel pencils, and oil pencils. The sizes are about as accurate as you can expect from someone whose last math class was sometime before the first Reagan Administration. Just for the record?….prices range between 135$ and 4000$, as a wildly general and arbitrarily-enforced rule. The final fact is that it’s easier for everyone to inquire via email or telephone. Potential clients can do themselves a favor by remembering that I’m always a complete sucker for a good sob story. Just recall that it has to be a good one. We regret to say that chocolates, contraband nylons, and “Don’t Blame Me…I voted for Hilary” buttons are no longer accepted as alternative payments.
In most cases, I can cough up a reasonably accurate guess as to where the picture is. Potential clients can do themselves a favor by remembering that I’m always a complete sucker for a good sob story. Just recall that it has to be a good one. If you want to buy one of the pieces, high-resolution jpegs are available. We regret to say that chocolates, contraband nylons, and “Don’t Blame Me…I voted for McCain” buttons are no longer accepted as alternative payments. Those pieces already being handled by a particular gallery are (for the most part and somewhat reliably) marked as such; by clicking on the gallery’s name, you may contact the galleries regarding availability, price, etc.). Almost all of the pictures are framed by the galleries, but I do sell them out of the frames if asked.
Here are a few of my favorites from the current collection:
“Waiting for You (another anniversary portrait)”
“Waiting for You (another anniversary portrait)”
Pencil, pastel, and Watercolor
2024
$250 (please email dterrydraw@aol.com or private message if interested in purchase
Today’s yet another anniversary in my little, private calendar.
And, yes, I know that the title’s taken from a sappy Richard Marx song from the 1980’s. Go to, (and ignore the dreadful video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2zeudxXjuU
“Old Friends” (Alison Brown; Hillsborough, NC)
“Adam’s Way/Faithful”
Pencil, pastel, and watercolor
October 2023.
$300
(if interested in purchase, please email dterrdraw@aol.com or private message)
Unexpectedly enough, at age 63, I find myself having lost my house & garden, saddled with a dead husband, and 3 out of four of my dogs dead in the last two years.. It all makes, I gather, for a sad life (by most folks’ standards).
That said?..it does free up a lot of time to paint what matters to me. I did this today…… recalling, quite fondly, the 1980/90’s…..when I was in my prime (as Isaak Dineson wrote: “Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I was standing on the roof of my life”).
Oh well…..I’m pleased with today’s obviously nostalgic work, and I do still have to say that pretty-much every professional dancer and/or soccer player I’ve ever met/slept with has the most APPALLINGLY UGLY feet you will ever see on a man (for various reasons, I never bothered to investigate the women). Trust me on this one…..
For the song?…..go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkav8DIIEpY
“Horseman” (portrait of Will Faudree; Southern Pines, NC)
A day hasn’t gone by, over the past two years, when I don’t actively miss my longtime and steadfast friend, Newby Day….who died a little over two years ago. I gave the painting to her daughters. Newby lived for many decades with her many and many beloved terriers. Since her death, I’ve always thought of this poem when I think of her. “In My Good Death”.By Dalia Shevin
— For David Shevin, in loving memory
“I will find myself waist-deep in high summer grass. The humming
shock of the golden light. And I will hear them before I see
them and know right away who is bounding across the field to meet
me. All my good dogs will come then, their wet noses
bumping against my palms, their hot panting, their rough faithful
tongues. Their eyes are young and shiny again. The wiry scruff of
their fur, the unspeakable softness of their bellies, their velvet ears
against my cheeks. I will bend to them, my face covered with
their kisses, my hands full of them. In the grass, I will let them knock
me down. “
“August; Rappanhannock County, VA”
Pencil, pastel, and watercolor
2020
I’ve loved western Rappahannock County since I first went there in the late 1970s. Well-tended farms, stone -walls, and orchards ran up into the mountains, with the river and about a thousand creeks around every turn in the road.
I know…..it’s cliched beyond belief, but I still love this song.
Catch me on the porch after a few drinks at night, play this,, and I will bust out crying. Sad, but true……….
go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vrEljMfXYo
“Cherokee Gold”
“VALENTINO” (Portrait of Suman Bhatia. 2013)
pastel, pencil, and watercolor
2015
“My Girl” (Portrait of Terry Graedon; for her husband, Joe Graedon)
Pencil, pastel, and watercolor
2014
NFS
One of the loveliest couples I know is Joe and Terry Graedon…..yes, they of Public Radio’s “The People’s Pharmacy”. They’re just…..fun and delightful, smart and genuinely caring and all sorts of other good things.
This portrait of Terry was a present from me to Joe. Isn’t Terry a long-limbed filly of a girl? She’ll be just as pretty when she’s ninety (a genuine smile does, indeed, go a long way in this world).
“Portrait of Catherine Sullivan Oztekin”
“Portrait of Catherine Sullivan Oztekin”
Pencil, pastel, and watercolor
2020
Well, I wouldn’t be the first in this world to have noticed that, while a smile might and may convey many things, it’s only very rarely that obvious kindness is conveyed. Maybe it’s in the eyes….maybe in the smile. In any case, you can see it in this portrait. I knew Catherine “Cacky” Sullivan (” Catherine Sullivan Oztekin” these days) during my college days at Sewanee, where she figured rather prominently as a pretty, pleasant, and quite warrantedly popular girl. I hadn’t, though, particularly thought of her in 36 years until I encountered her page on Facebook a few years ago……and immediately thought “Good Lord….she’s certainly grown up to be a beautiful woman”. Turns out that she has done so, in all the various ways one might define “beautiful”. I’m rarely struck by how lovely some folks are (frankly, I’ve been paid plenty of money, over the years, to paint more than plenty of physically beautiful folks who are otherwise utterly forgettable), but Cacky’s genuinely warm smile struck me, and I asked her (in an email) if I could paint her someday. She said yes…..but I think she was fairly surprised that anyone would want to paint her. “Add a complete lack of vanity to this woman’s list of virtues”, I thought. It remains that she was always a pretty girl, but something indefinable happened around age forty, and she became beautiful. Just a fact. So, sitting here in this old inn (which is currently deserted, courtesy of a stray pandemic), I decided this morning to finally paint Cacky’s portrait. It’s small, of course…..but so is most of my work. It’ll be a gift to Cacky and her husband, of course.
“Bessie Mbdugah and Child”
I first met Bessie, two years ago, when she and her two lively children came through this old house for the town’s Christmas Tour.
I immediately thought she was lovely, and I was very happy to do this portrait of her and one of her children this past Christmas. Her astonishingly-tall husband (at 5’6″, I’m used to being the tallest creature in this single-person household filled with small terriers) gave it to her on Christmas Day.
Doesn’t she have that rare thing…..,a very-very genuine smile? She does. That’s what first attracted me to her, while the house was filled with 50 or so folks at a time, tromping through the place.
© 2020 David Terry Art
“August Rains”
pastel, pencil, and watercolor
2018
“Bette Davis Eyes” (Portrait of Dawne Anderson. circa 1989)
“Fasten your seat-belts……it’s going to be a bumpy night…..”
My long time friend, the justly well-known documentary photographer, Titus Heagins (to see some really beautiful work, please go to titusbrooksheagins.com immediately responded to yesterday’s portrait of John Michael Lopez with a message sent from his i-phone: “I love it…best from you…do more of this”.
So, I did…..finishing up (between 5 am this morning and now, which is 1:30 in the afternoon) this small portrait of another friend from, once again, long ago and far away….Vermont, Oxford (the one in England, not the town north of Durham), etcetera……
Dawne, whom I first met at the Breadloaf Writer’s School at Middlebury, Vermont, was, in particular, a good poet, and (more generally) a force to be reckoned with, back in those early days (the mid-’80s, to be precise-ish). I thought (and still think) she was quite beautiful; so, the title of this portrait comes all too readily to mind.
Dawne was also the woman who memorably telephoned (after I had sent out, to 27 friends and relatives, what I now regard as a probably-gratuitous “coming-out” letter) to say “So…. you’re gay? Great. For a while there, I wondered if maybe you were something actually weird.….like just asexual…..”.
“Speak, Memory” Pastel, pencil, and watercolor. 2018….and, yes, it’s for sale; just contact me). I finished this today, thinking (as I sat here among all these unpacked boxes and two dogs who want to go on the fields for the long, end-of-the-day walk) to DO something that forged a connection between my old life and this new and unwelcomed sudden one. The title’s stolen, of course, from Nabokov (a great and unapologetic thief, himself,….just like Picasso)
© 2020 David Terry Art
© 2020 David Terry Art
“Deep Nights and Quiet Days” Pencil pen, and watercolor 2018 The subject is my old Dougan, who, at age 13, remains the most genuinely sweet-tempered, if not the smartest terrier I’ve ever had (and who knows how he would rank among the fastest since I’ve never seen him act in the least rushed or hurried since he was about three months old) He is, all done and said, the mellow, not-so-Big Lebowski of West Highland terriers. He’s aging well and peacefully out here on the farm. Most of every day, nowadays, Dougan’s off with the fairies (as the Irish say of sweet, but forgetful/charmingly vague old ladies who doze off to sleep every half hour or so, but who invariably wake up bright and happy). Still?…he perks right up and is his young self when there’s food in the offing or when we snuggle up each night in bed. As one friend said of him, years ago?….”Oh, I don’t know about ‘stupid’. Dougan’s just not going to let himself get exercised, figuratively or literally, over anything.”. Here’s him at his most beguiling……[/caption]
© 2020 David Terry Art
“Good Old Girl”
