"Paradise Lost" Found at Mullins Library

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Bye Bye Blackbird

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. —  “I believe in ghosts,” announces Laura Terry, assistant professor of architecture at the University of Arkansas. She is describing a series of paintings titled “Paradise Lost,” now on display in Mullins Library. Terry says simply, “Ghosts tell their own version of the truth.”

“The South is full of ghosts,” Terry continues, “and my interpretation of the southern landscape is one which identifies and isolates the ghosts left behind by things not seen, not heard, not spoken.” These Southern ghosts “veil the landscape with an unwritten memory of the place that was before,” explains Terry. To suggest this idea in her paintings, Terry applies layers of paint, each stratum concealing flat Cubist-like images and rich blocks of color that may be partially revealed when she applies a belt sander to the canvas. These multiple layers of images “create a palimpsest of the South, where elements are concealed and simultaneously revealed,” says Terry. 

The paintings are composed of overlapping large blocks of vibrant colors interspersed with images Terry associates with the Southern landscape, such as honeycombs, fields of grain, a lone blackbird, a lone hen. In “Late Bloomer,” a single, long-stalked flower marks the boundary between blocks of green and blue. In “Bye, Bye Blackbird,” circles suggest an organic opposition to the angular rigidity of the blocks of color. The paintings are busy with the building blocks of life, yet they seem oddly and patiently suspended in a vacuum void of movement. Terry explains, “The isolation on the picture plane bears witness to the struggle with leftover vulnerabilities of a place that could not withstand time.” 

Terry received a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Design from Auburn University in 1993 and a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1998. In 1998, she was featured as an emerging artist in “New American Paintings,” a juried publication. She has been featured in shows in Atlanta, Savannah, Ga., and Los Angeles. In 2003, she was awarded the Department of Architecture McIntosh Faculty Award for the series of paintings titled “Paradise Lost,” some of which appear in this exhibit.

Terry is the coordinator for the first-year design studio in the School of Architecture and the director of the Camp Aldersgate Design/Build Program. With both endeavors, she encourages students to see beyond what is easily seen and to capture the extraordinary from the ordinary landscape around them.

"Paradise Lost" will be on display in Mullins Library lobby level through the end of June. For more information call 575-6702 or visit http://libinfo.uark.edu/info/artexhibit.asp