The bright, bold works of area artist Terry Ekasala offer the perfect antidote to the dreary days of winter as they fill the main gallery at Catamount Arts for the entire month of February. A special reception honoring the Weymouth, Massachusetts native, who now makes her home in the Northeast Kingdom, will be held from 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm Friday, February 10, at the Catamount Arts Center on Eastern Avenue in St. Johnsbury. The reception is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. Terry Ekasala’s work will be on view through February 29.
Ekasala took an interest in drawing and art became her path at a very young age. In 1982 after receiving an Associate's Degree in Advertising from the Art Institute in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, she began working as a freelance artist in the field. Drawn to the domain of fine arts she set up her first studio in 1983 in an abandoned frame shop, part of the Clay hotel and youth hostel on Espanola Way, Miami Beach, Florida. Miami Beach was at that time a broken down palace of art deco dreams, inhabited mostly by the elderly, refugees, the unsuspecting youth hostel guests and scattered young creators who began to gather on Espanola Way and Lincoln Road. This scene lent a rich and diverse inspiration to a young open mind. She was among a number of artists who took to the streets doing graffiti on boarded up abandoned buildings and her work was featured on the cover of the Sunday edition of the Miami Herald as well as in a national Coca Cola commercial.
In 1987 Ekasala visited Paris for the second time and she decided to stay. She worked as a cook in a Tea Salon, all the while painting in her tiny apartment. In 1990 she set up a studio in Belleville, Paris' colorful 20th Arrondissement at La Forge, a little artist community made up of diverse nationalities. In the beginning La Forge was a squat and eventually became the first "Artist squat" to become legal in Paris due to the diligence, seriousness and hard work of this group of artists. This is where she painted until 2001. During these years her style and medium underwent many changes, and her work eventually became entirely abstract.In 2001 she moved to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, settingt up her studio in the center of of Lyndonville. In September, 2003, she had a personal exposition of her new abstract, large format oil paintings at the Metalstone Gallery in NYC.
Her philosophy of painting is just as personal as her style. "For me abstract painting is an act of balancing the juxtaposition of color, line, texture and form," she said recently. "I try to empty my mind. The observer in me can then take the wind out of the sails of contrived thought allowing the moment's mysterious impulse to be seized as a child might do. The images are the consequential vibrational energy from the clashing of all this."
"Do they meaning anything?" Ekasala concluded. "No, just like a flower doesn't mean anything."
The galleries at Catamount Arts are open to the public free of charge from 11 am - 6 pm Monday through Saturday and before and after each film screening.For more information on this exhibit, and all upcoming events at Catamount Arts, please visit www.catamountarts.org.
