Terry Boutelle: Art Market Proviincetown

Terry Boutelle

Migration

"Lately I am confronted daily with the images of migration and it’s causes, and I paint in response.

This group of abstract paintings are a meditation on migration and the forces that cause the movement of great numbers of people away from their homelands: Escaping war, oppression, poverty, famine and the effects of climate change, seeking peace, security, safety, freedom, or Embarking on pilrimage.

The squares of tally marks I use as imagery in these paintings have come to represent to me populations of people: whether bound together by family, religion, ethnicity, culture, heritage, citizenship, or common cause. Together the squares construct community from the unknown, or they break apart.

My process alternates between applying color and building up the surface of the canvas. I might use plaster, fabric, paper, metal, papier mache, polyethylene foam, netting and other materials and found objects to create a textured or contoured surface. I try to stretch the limits of my materials and methods as I work on each painting. The “carving” of each tally mark into the paint surface is a way to concretize the journey of the individual traveller."

Terry Boutelle is a Boston-based artist and teacher, having completed an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design low residency program at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown in 2013. Past exhibits include: “Counting Breaths” at the Koussevitzky Art Gallery at Berkshire Community College, “Remembrance” at Andover Newton Theological School, “A Forest in Mind” at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, and “Treescapes” at VCC Gallery at Bentley College.