terri
mcmillan

using colour to reference the ‘beingness’ of the land

ABOUT TERRI:

Terri McMillan has always been engaged in art of some form. When she moved to Healesville 11 years ago following a life of teaching children and more recently in semi-retirement, teaching adults, she found a little extra time and space to work more seriously in her arts practice.

Over the past 30 years she has participated in numerous art classes using a variety of mediums including 10 years working in the traditional practice of religious iconography under the tutelage of Robert Gallagher. Oil painting classes with David Moore at Monsalvat, deepened her understanding of tonal painting and pastel classes with Janet Hayes at Badger Creek, ‘loosened’ her realistic, detailed approach. David and Janet both helped her to trust in the emergence of an image when working with the wonderful interplay of light and darkness.

Terri credits her long term interest in art to her introduction to Rudolf Steiner’s and Goethe’s Colour Theory, and the opportunity class teaching gave her to observe the unhindered freedom with which her students unconsciously ‘played with’ and explored colour and texture during their lessons in craft, drawing, painting and in fact, all artistic endeavours.

As a geographer she endeavoured to nurture the imaginative faculty in children through narrative and story, fostering their capacity to inwardly sense and ‘feel’ place and space, particularly in the Australian landscape.

In the past 2 years with more time to dedicate to her art work, Terri has painted under the expert guidance of Ron Reynolds, trying to simplify her work and, working with oil paints, focussing on the gesture of the image before her. She strives to use colour to reference the ‘beingness’ of the land as sentinel to its story and to evoke an impression on human feeling of the terrain’s ancient and immortal qualities, and of the ephemeral nature of Australian sunlight on our unique landscape.

Medium: painting