Biography

Early and Recent Paintings

by Jane Terzis

Artist’s Statement

When we turn to someone, we check in by looking at their face and their posture. That’s the information that I’m interested in conveying. Some of the people I paint are imagined. Sometimes a portrait starts with someone I know and sometimes a portrait starts with someone who is real, but a stranger. The portraits that I paint are solicited by me, rather than commissioned by them. A painting is done when a personality materializes. In the end that person is rarely the person I started with, but feels more like a memory – a portrait of myself, even when the character has been invented. It’s not uncommon for me to catch the person I thought I had invented walking down the street years later.

I’m also struck by how revealing the back of someone can be. There’s an uncovering of something fundamentally tender and true when we’re seen from behind.

The head flap kid insists on showing up from time to time and I do not know where he/she comes from. I don’t even ask.

Jane Terzis

Jane Terzis