< about >
A native New Yorker and artist who works in painting, drawing, printmaking, and tattoo, Terry Marks has been affiliated with the international, ReModernist arts movement Stuckism since 2001, exhibiting with various configurations of the group on three continents, including the Liverpool Biennial, and in Tehran, Iran.
Her pictures are a surreal take on Magical Realism with an upside-down, perverse, logic. Both puzzling and believable, many of her elements are contradictory, specializing in the absurd, and in oddball eccentricities.
< artist statement >
I am drawn to, and like to draw, urban decay with signs of nature taking over, floral morphology, antiquated machinery and mechanisms, and illuminated manuscripts.
I don't set out to be cryptic or mysterious. I start by finding elements I find interesting that I want to spend time with, and they become components of a bigger picture. The process is like building a puzzle without all the pieces; the result is a slice of narrative, a single moment from a longer story, and the missing pieces are a part of it.
Like in dreams, objects, characters and scenes reveal themselves in no particular order, and I help them along to a more defined arrangement. I don’t spell everything out, leaving room for viewers to sort the unexplained through their own filters. Myself included: on subsequent viewings I see different aspects of the story. The pictures are triggers and suggestions for each person who sees them, each time they see it.