RAiR Exhibition — Terri Rolland at RMAC
Terri Rolland
Resonance
Roswell Artist-in-Residence exhibition
October 23, 2021 - January 2, 2022
🔹Opening Reception: Friday, October 22, 6-7 pm
“You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder. It is good to remember that the planet is carrying you.” — Vandana Shiva
These paintings are rooted in the energy of the earthly world. I am concerned with the places where land and sky meet, and the color, temperature and vibration found there. Visual meets perceptual: time of day, light, heat, wind, moisture, silence, smells and sounds are as important as what is seen and considered known. Accordingly, I reduce a painting to its three most elemental colors and shapes to best honor the essence of a place in time, pared down to a relationship that is material and subtle. I use a process of layering several thin coats of clay paint to create a muted matte luminosity of surface and color that is both active and still. The colors exemplify energy and life forces; the shapes ground us, and slightly identify where we are, without too much fuss. Painting allows nonsense and transcendence to live rightfully together, their balance found, lost and found again. I aim for an off-kilter but precise resonance in my work.
How do we sense the sublime and essential power of nature that is set apart from a culture of clamor and distraction? How do we sustain that attention and sensitivity upon reentry into less “natural” spaces? Can a painting provide a place of memory, meditation and spaciousness to keep us connected and in balance with the earth? Does a painting hold life energy? Can color vibrations both sharpen and calm our mind and nervous system? Can we see and feel these vibrations wherever we are, once we come to know and value them?
While Terri Rolland’s work is steeped in the tradition of abstraction and modernist landscape painting, she considers her east coast working-class roots and her feminist/butch/queer sensibility to be a major factor in the development of her aesthetic. She has lived and worked in New Mexico since 1990.
Terri Rolland received her BFA from Moore College of Art in Philadelphia and studied at Tyler School of Art in Rome, Italy. She has taught at the University of the Arts (formerly Philadelphia College of Art) in Philadelphia and at Pennsylvania State University, Ogantz Campus. She is the recipient of the Ucross Foundation Fellowship (2019), the Jentel Residency Fellowship (2006) and the MacDowell Colony Fellowship (2004.) She is currently in residence at the Roswell-Artist-In-Residency Program. She is a recipient of a 2008 Individual Support Grant from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation and a 1988 Visual Arts Grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In 2020 she received a grant from the Pollock Krasner Foundation which has helped fund this project.
To learn more about this artist please visit www.terrirolland.com
