Terry Ekasala

Terry took an interest in drawing and art became her path at a very young age.  In 1982 after receiving an Associates Degree in Advertising from the Art Institute in Ft. Lauderdale 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 Fl.  This was a huge step into the wide world of art and life. Miami Beach was at that time a broken down palace of art deco dreams, inhabited mostly by the elderly, refugees, addicts, the unsuspecting youth hostel guests and scattered young creators whom began to gather on Espanola Way and Lincoln Rd. This scene lent to rich and diverse inspiration in a young open mind. She worked in the figurative manner at this time, primarily drawing and painting as medium. Here, she became a member of the Artifacts Art Group. This group staged weekly events at the hot 80’s Miami nightclub “Fire and Ice” as well as organized exhibits and finally opened their own gallery on the corner of Lincoln Rd and Michigan, Miami Beach.  She was amongst 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 a national Coke a Cola commercial.

In 1987, Terry 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. Her figurative subject slowly transformed to abstract figurative, eventually to become entirely abstract.  In the eleven years at La Forge she participated in the annual “Open Studio” of Belleville, allowing her the opportunity to sell her work directly to the public. During these years she showed her work in personal and group expositions in and around Paris as well as Berlin, Germany and New York City.

In 2001 she moved to the Northeast Kingdom, Vermont.  She set up her studio in the center of the small village of Lyndonville. In September 2003 she had a personal exposition of her new abstract, large format oil paintings at the Metalstone Gallery in NYC.  In 2004 her son Zack was born. For a short period of time she worked with acrylic on board in small format as a direct result of limited lenths of painting time with a newborn baby. This work was shown at the Metalstone Gallery as a personal exposition entitled “Subsequent Development, an Assembly of Small Paintings” in March of 2005.

Terry took a few years break from painting until 2010 when she completed several large abstract paintings in her basement. May 2011 she found her “dream” studio in West Burke where she now paints. She resides in East Burke with her family.