the semi-finalist is: Benjamin Terrell

Untitled
2023, oil and stain on wood panel, 12" x 9"

In Benjamin Terrell’s compositions we are habitually positioned as an elevated observer, viewing his invented worlds from upstream and up in the air - a vantage point shared by intrepid clouds and stoic mountain tops. His distant horizon lines can often be caught inching their way towards the upper registers of his intimately scaled compositions, suggesting a vast calm that stretches beyond the borders of his wooden panels. Spatially, however, the magnitude of Terrell’s  invented scenes is customarily upended and reversed, and all of the idyllic calm associated with a peaceful landscape or seascape is suddenly infused with a subtle churning. His bodies of water - oceans, rivers, and gravity defying waterfalls - often look as though they are about to break through the surfaces they are painted on and pour into the space of the viewer, dampening shoes and pant cuffs along the way. The source, it would seem, is ready to flow back into us. The  reflection of midnight’s stars or a setting sun on the ocean’s tranquil surface transforms into a thin, delicate skin barely covering something deeper and incomprehensibly complex. Thin slices of sky and land are pieced together on a stage set for a play ready to unfold in geological time. As peaceful and idyllic as Terrell’s landscapes  may initially appear, these are depictions of a world in motion, of a universe whose inner clockworks are momentarily revealed to show us that the laws of physics don’t always apply. 

When standing in front of a painting by Benjamin Terrell, I am always aware of being the viewer, of being positioned in front of a poetic distillation of the rural Oregon that he knows and loves. They are visual evidence of the fragile theory of perpetual motion: exterior expressions of an interior world that is informed by a deep connection to a very real place. When standing in front of a painting by Terrell, I also see an invitation to step into his world and be reminded of the journey that each of us is on: we are the log on the back of a truck, the impossible to see inhabitant of a small dwelling tucked into its surroundings, the boat sailing downstream, the restless cloud and the occasional tree. 

For this edition of The Semi-Finalist I'm excited to share my interview with Oregon based artist and writer Benjamin Terrell. In it he talks about his process, past and present influences, and his relationship to place.

Benjamin Terrell in his studio.

The Semi-Finalist: Let's start off with a boiler plate question that I still find to be useful when I'm interviewing an artist, even one that I've known and admired for close to 34 years: tell me about your formative years. Who were your influences and what was your path to becoming both a writer and a painter?

Benjamin Terrell: We find ourselves here, all sent to the same odd, opulent wilderness with similar yet unique sack lunches. Painting and writing about painting are the ways I unpack what I was given and how I process getting to the bottom of a bottomless bag. Expression is the yardstick that can measure between the specific and the universal. My Mother was a painter and my Father was a writer. These days, in their absence, I do both things as a dialogue between writing and painting and to feel close to both of my parents. Although I was born in Portland, I was raised in Memphis, TN where I was introduced to the work of Walter Anderson and Carol Cloar. I met Cloar once; I would walk past his house and one day we had a brief curbside conversation about a bird hopping between us and the sidewalk. It was a short yet slow, typical southern exchange, as if taken right from one of the artist's paintings. Also, Cloar wore the best ugly shirts. In college (at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago) I was still thinking about artists I had discovered while living in the south, like Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden. Standouts from the Art Institute collection were the paintings of Marsden Hartley (the intimacy of the outdoors) and Edward Vuillard (vast relational interiority). 

Above: Mountain with Boat
2023, oil and stain on wood panel, 14" x 11"

​Below: Mountain and Shore
2023, oil and stain on wood panel, 14" x 11"

S-F: ​I’m also interested in how you currently balance writing and painting. Do you keep them separate, or do they overlap in some way?

BT: I am fortunate - I am always painting and I write about painting, so there is a natural, easily accessible segue between the two things. One separation: I mostly write about other artists. But, for me, writing is like sending fan mail to the act of painting, and in the honoring I bring back depth and perspective to my visual practice.  I walk a lot and am always reading and looking at other artists, so it feels like I am always processing. Also, Instagram - and even Covid - has created additional closeness and online intermingling of artist and admirers, and I think that has led to more expansive conversation. Finally, having a habit (like painting) and having your habit have a habit (like writing) allows a necessary inversion of interior and exterior voices. These days painting for me feels plural, whereas writing is more intimate and singular. Or perhaps writing feels like a second child - my expectations of it are different and it gets to wander outside of the expectations given to the firstborn, my visual practice.

Above: Untitled
2023, oil and stain on wood panel, 10" x 8"

​Below: Home in the Gorge
2023, oil and stain on wood panel, 8" x 10"

S-F: At times your work features isolated homes tucked into impossibly grand landscapes; at other times the main event is a log truck cruising down a highway. Can you talk about your connection to these symbolic subjects and why you keep coming back to them?

BT: Living in the Willamette national forest I see many log trucks, especially after the big fire a few years back. It occurred to me that we, like the logs on the truck, exist in a state of in between and are always in a process of becoming. The trucks moved through the painted landscapes as a nod to the type of transformation that can occur when we recapitulate the slight, malleable and fluid relationship we have with our surroundings. The little houses, too, are like impermanent stances, our temporary lenses that look out at something grand, hard to name, unique and ultimately unexplainable. The landscape I want to paint is a meeting place, somewhere where something immense meets something immeasurable.

House Between Two Cliffs
2023, oil and stain on wood panel, 10" x 8"

Log Truck Overpass
2021, oil and stain on wood panel, 10" x 8"

S-F: Over the last few years you've been developing a deeply personal approach to painting. Can you talk about your technique and how it came about?

BT: I've been painting on wood panels for three or four years now. Originally I covered them with canvas to create a more taut surface to push back against the brush. But I liked the grain and the give of the porous wood beneath and the way the paint would both sit and soak into the surface. I bought different stains from the hardware store to highlight the natural patterns specific to each board. Somewhere along the way the wood became as important as what I could put on top of it. For me, a more interesting dialogue occurred when I approached the blank wood as a work already in progress rather than a conversation that began with my voice or assuming anything is ever a blank page. When I applied the stain thin it felt like watercolor's relationship to paper. Also, I occasionally carved into the surface and that reminded me of wood block prints - both things I like. Different, less traditional techniques felt inexhaustible and less controllable, whereas when I built up with too much oil paint it felt too straight forward, like I was forfeiting a sense of discovery. I love it most when a material surprises me or doesn't do exactly as I want.

Benjamin Terrell in his backyard studio in Springfield, Oregon.

S-F: ​In our conversations about painting and creativity, you’ve talked a lot about nature and your interest in unknowable origins and unanswerable questions. Can you talk about how you approach these subjects when you’re in your studio?

BT: I think to have a path or practice asking or answering important questions by creating something new requires a willingness and a foolishness to perpetually begin again. Because invariably every creative effort will fall short, every mood or moment is often obscured by egoic cloud cover and you are sent back to the studio to rename and recommit. "Deciding" is both enemy and awkward officiant of the dance necessary to  advance beyond knowing and not knowing. I was told recently "not knowing" is intimacy, which I imagine as the ultimate open and unarmored place where oneness can occur (the place prior to the mind's limited explanations). I see oneness as a natural state, but art is always a byproduct of that, always a ripple away once a stone is thrown. Ultimately, art isn't evidence of a self, it is a self-annihilation, the realization that the ripple was never the rock. I remember a poem where the author proclaimed that he felt sorry for those who skated the surface of the pond, never to fall in. Rather than an analogy suggesting creativity requires pain or is born from misfortune, I understood it to mean that life is about infinite immersion and that a goal is to be ok with the merging that occurs on uncontrollable and unknowable terms.

Two Mountains
2023, oil and stain on wood panel, 10" x 8"

S-F: ​Who have you been looking at recently (living or dead)? And who have you been reading recently?

BT: I think a lot about Ken Price, John Dilg and Umetaro Aziechi in terms of their personal iconography and regionality. I often return to and admire the worlds of Bill Lynch, Thomas Nozkowski, David Milne and Bernard Leach. Contemporary artists I admire are, Erin Okeefe, Kaitlyn Eichwald and Sean Noonan. I benefit from being in orbit with Uwe Henneken, Spencer Shakespeare and Brian Scott Campbell. I love reading Cole Swensen, John Yau and Annie Dillard. I think Barry Lopez’s and Peter Schjeldahl's voices have been tremendously important to me. My friend Dan Gluibizzi once told me there were certain painters from history he "wouldn't let in the studio." I love that idea and think about it often. I do spend much of my time in parallel with people I admire. But I think of creativity as a choir, and I can easily imagine between the singing, in the silences, are the richest, most important parts of the song.

Mountain and Cloud
2023, oil and stain on wood panel, 10" x 8"

S-F: What's next for you?

BT: In June I will show work with John Richardson at One Wall Gallery in Eugene. I am also looking forward to traveling this year and to some new writing projects, some known and others yet to be known. I am always looking for new voices and venues for other opportunities, I encourage feedback if this speaks to anyone reading.

You can see more of Benjamin Terrell's work:
      - on his instagram: @benjamin_terrell_painting
      - at One Wall Gallery in Eugene, Oregon: @one.wall.gallery
   - Terrell has also shown work at BARK Berlin Gallery (Berlin, Germany), Meyer- Riegger Gallery (Berlin, Germany; show curated by Uwe Henneken) and was recently included in an online show with MePaintsMe (on instagram as @mepaintsme).

House and Cloud
2023, oil and stain on wood panel, 10" x 8"

Mountain Home
2022, oil and stain on wood panel, 8" x 10"

Little Boat Big Boat
2021, oil and stain on wood panel, 16" x 20"