Meet Terri Lloyd | Art Renegade

We had the good fortune of connecting with Terri Lloyd and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Terri, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
I love problem solving, and story telling. And I’m not a good fit in corporate culture which kills creativity with meetings and committees and conformity.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
My most recent body of work is the result of a two year exploration of unlearning my artistic practice. The catalyst of which was the passing of my father in late 2017. Up until that time, my work was primarily digital which lent itself to being very tight and clean. The event of loss opened up a floodgate of creativity along with a need to honor some of my grief through art making. It was also time to move my practice in a different direction. That direction was to move out of my comfort zone and take a radical leap back into painting —with my other hand. It was there that I was able to give myself permission to relinquish control and to let the art guide me. During this process, I stopped using the label “artist” to describe myself. It was important to remove the weight of professional and technical expectations, suspending the inner critic as I gave voice to long silenced memories and trauma. And now, confronted with aging and the limitations of arthritic hands, I’m no longer interested in the pain of technical excellence. Telling a story with as little noise as possible provides me a clarity of feeling rather than photographic or historic accuracy. In The Court Of The Easter Queen, is a retelling of my functionally dysfunctional childhood. Exploiting old family photos which are quirky and often lack proper photo composition pushes me to take risks of my own, often peeling away what or who isn’t necessary. My lens of our family history is very different from that of my siblings. The old photos aging in yellow or orange tones hit me with the warmth of a nostalgia that never existed. Who is present and who is not present is equally important and provides a glimpse into our dynamics individually and collectively. Facelessness is a way to protect and project the innocence. Facelessness also gives the viewer a place to insert themselves into the stories depicted. The neckless child is a reflection of things that were said to me, about me. I suppose if my head weren’t attached, I would indeed lose it.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
We might dash into DTLA and peruse a few gallery spaces like Mash Gallery or Art Share LA or Hauser & Wirth. We’d probably come back to Highland Park where I live for a coffee and piece of cake at La Monarca. We might stop by Highland Park Wine and grab a bottle of Vinho Verde and maybe some pizza and salad at Triple Beam. Or maybe we’d just forget all that and have a couple of home brews that my husband made and pulled pork sandwiches that were just finished cooking in the Instant Pot…

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
This shout out is dedicated to pontificating malarkeyists, the oddballs, the rebels with or without a cause, and other iconoclasts who have the courage to continue to the struggle to be seen and heard.

Website: https://terrilloyd.net/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrilloydartist/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TerriLloydArtist
Other: https://pinkbuddha.pink/