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PaintingsDIRECT:
Plein air painting is sometimes not for the faint of heart. Please share with us some of your most challenging or interesting experiences painting in the outdoors.
Terry Oakes Bourret:
Often my students are worried about what others will think of them when they see their works in progress. Mostly, I tell them, people ignore you, but not always. Then I tell them some stories about painting on the streets in New York City. I often work with a small pochade and 6" x 8" canvases which are easier to carry around. With the pochade I don't have to carry an easel, and I am seldom even noticed. I was on Christopher Street in the Village and became enraptured with a complicated chimney, so that I was no longer paying attention to my proportion. I heard some voices chattering behind me in a foreign tongue. I then looked more carefully at my painting and realized the chimney had grown to be larger than the building. I'm sure they returned to their country saying those Americans really need to learn how to draw.
Another time a friend and I were drawing in Chinatown and she was proposed to by a street person. I have had the fence I was painting torn down before my eyes, a boat leave the dock, my easel blow down a hill, a dog lift his leg and a bird make a deposit on my paintings. Everyone is a critic.
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Madison Boats (1999)
Terry Oakes Bourret
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Country Corner (2002)
Terry Oakes Bourret
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PaintingsDIRECT:
You also teach art classes, and many of your students have noted in your guestbook what a great teacher and mentor you've been. What is it about teaching art that inspires these efforts?
Terry Oakes Bourret:
I love to study and teaching forces me to study. I like to use the ability that each student brings to the table and allow them to grow in their own way by using principles to teach them how to think. My medical background makes me approach the process in a somewhat different manner.
I am interested in brain research (right hemisphere vs. left). I am very interested in process. I also love basing everything on teaching principles. You might say I use my students as research. I enjoy tapping into each one's individual creative place to make them the best they can be rather than making clones. I teach children from six to adults in their eighties. The lack of art education in this country is very sad. The power of art in this stressful world is wonderful.
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PaintingsDIRECT: You clearly have a love for the outdoors and nature, but your artwork also conveys a bit of nostalgia, perhaps for earlier, simpler times. Your comments?
Terry Oakes Bourret:
I guess outdoor painters pay more attention to the changes in the landscape. When you are at the shore scouting to do a painting and realize all the seascapes are covered by large, often ugly mansions, you feel obligated to record the few places left that are beautiful. The same goes for the few remaining mailboxes, farms, fruit stands, ancient trucks, striped tents, old fashioned gas stations, etc. The general public often does not notice these things. They might stop by when I am painting and ask why I am painting this or that? When I point out that there are only a few left in the state, they remark, "Yeah, you're right."
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Fairgrounds (2004)
Terry Oakes Bourret
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Lasalle Road (2004)
Terry Oakes Bourret
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PaintingsDIRECT:
You've seemingly painted it all - landscapes, seascapes, still lifes and studies of flora - which is your favorite subject, and which most challenging?
Terry Oakes Bourret:
My favorite subject is whatever I am doing right now. I like and need variety. I keep a drawing/writing journal. I draw my life: doctors' offices, fireworks, waiting for a movie to start, anything. I always have a journal in my pocketbook, ready for when I find myself waiting.
Right now I am painting animals and working on a series of paintings from a recent trip to Italy. I belong to the Connecticut Plein Aire Painters Society, and I am excited about a plan for the group to paint in Hartford at night. Also, we will be painting inside two famous Hartford landmarks, the Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe houses. |
PaintingsDIRECT:
Has your approach to your art or your choice of subject and media changed over time?
Terry Oakes Bourret:
Yes, they have. Years ago I went to New York City to paint for a week. At the beginning of the week I went to the Hamner Gallery to see an exhibit by LeRoy Neiman. His exhibit was so exciting, featuring sketches done in Africa: a charcoal drawing of an elephant; a pen and ink of monkey studies, along with his big corporate work. Then and there I decided I was living in a boring box. I spent the rest of the week experimenting and drawing in pencil, charcoal, pastels, and watercolor. It was a great week - few commercial products but great process. The week changed me. I now use multiple mediums for my pleasure even though I use mostly oil and oil pastel for business.
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Studio Stuff (2001)
Terry Oakes Bourret
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Hydrangeas III (2004)
Terry Oakes Bourret
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PaintingsDIRECT:
What do you most hope the viewer will experience when viewing your art?
Terry Oakes Bourret:
Some paintings I just paint because the color is so glorious, like my florals, and I want them to drink in the color. Other times I paint to make a point, such as "#2230", my large oil of two cows. I painted those cows at a Connecticut farm and felt sad that they were just numbers, no more Bessies and Flossies like we see at our local Durham Fair. As I was painting them with that thought in mind, some old farmers walked by and commented on that very thing. Other times I want to make people notice the beauty of something they might not think is so beautiful (" commented on that very thing. Other times I want to make people notice the beauty of something they might not think is so beautiful ("Trucks", "Herzig's Stand", "Madison Boats") Or I want to give them a laugh ("Barnyard Gossips", "Tractor Groupies"). I love to capture and preserve things that are disappearing from our lives: old telephone poles, trucks and cars ("Green Cadillac"), antiquated mailboxes ("Country Corner"), bygone farm buildings ("Vinalyk's Barn", "Tin Roof"). Mostly I want my viewer to feel a sense of the place as it is now, in all its shapes, patterns, colors, ideas and emotions.
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View more artworks by Terry Oakes Bourret ...
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