Terry studied Art and Design at Oldham School of Art (1967-1969). After leaving Art School he continued to paint, joining forces with 3 other like minded artists to form the Embryo Group. This enabled them to share the cost of staging exhibitions of their work all over the country. Terry was approached by the Portland Gallery Manchester which from 1973 represented him and his work. This gallery along with the Colin Jellicoe Gallery staged the North West One exhibition at the Chenil Gallery London alongside artists such as Geoffrey Key, Trevor Grimshaw and David Hockney.
Feeling slightly out of his depth in such company he concluded that he needed a more formal art education. So he enrolled on a Fine Art Degree course at what is now known as Manchester Metropolitan University. This was a profoundly damaging time for him artistically. His work was constantly derided by many of his tutors as it did not conform to currently fashionable beliefs of what art should be. He was told that his dedication to the craft of painting and drawing was merely painting by numbers.
Luckily Howard Hodgkin was the external assessor and he liked Terry’s work and against opposition used his influence to award him a 2:1. But the damage the previous three years had done made him doubt his art. Although he did still paint in fits and starts, he concentrated on living a ‘normal life’. Using his abilities as an illustrator in a series of jobs designing and teaching until in the late 90’s he was employed designing and developing special educational needs ‘SEN’ software for Granada Television.
However the steady realisation that art was a passion that had not died within him grew until in late 2015 he began to paint full time again. He had his first solo show at Gallery Oldham in the summer of 2018. He was for several years represented by the John Noott Gallery in Worcestershire and exhibited with them at London Arts Fairs. In 2022 he was elected to the membership of the Manchester Academy of Fine Art and has exhibited with them regularly since.
Terry’s work derives from his fascination with the idea of the English eerie. The idea of uncanny forces, which resonate in a place, the buried mysteries and secrets that lie just under the surface of a landscape, He tries to recapture the imagination we all had as children and the perception of the wonderfulness of everyday objects and places. He seeks to show that things are never quite what they seem and that the viewer will build their own narratives in order to unravel the mystery.
He works exclusively with oil on canvas and pencil on paper.
