Life isn’t fair, it is tough and often unforgiving. But it is also funny, so rewarding with humor that even those miserable truths can be ameliorated in a small way by one’s attitude. Hemmingway said “Write hard and clear about what hurts” and Terri Lloyd does this writing with paint, capturing such an attitude toward using one’s artistic voice to defeat the things in life that can make it all too sour to bear. In that regard, her “The Other Hand” series may be a coping mechanism but to the viewer it is a collection of wise pictures carrying a dark humor like a casket of our collective mortality. As fine art, this series is most reminiscent of the work of Raymond Pettibon.
The images carry an unabashed primitive expressionism. The painted text insists on a morose retelling of what you think you are looking at. Here the narrative and irony are in abundance. These are, to their essence, masterpieces of mortality.
—Mat Gleason
My Friend Terri, 2018, 18 x 24, acrylic on paper
In December 2017, my dad passed away. This was both a psychological and creative catalyst that pushed me away from my digital comfort zone.
This would be a process where poetry, broken haiku and the innocence of visuals collide. I could commit a sort of psychic harakiri.
The original idea was based on an exercise of using both hands to write letters to myself. The less dominant hand would be the child I was, the dominant hand the parent I wish I had.
I didn’t want to write letters. It was important for me to take ownership and make this exercise my own. This is the result.