Terry Jarrard-Dimond to Speak at Next Meeting
“I think of myself as an artist who is not limited to a specific medium,” she said. “I work through process and a dialogue with materials which include fiber, wood, metal, encaustic paint, oil and cold wax, and acrylic paint.”
Oil and cold wax will be the focus of her presentation on March 11. “We have an idea of wax as a solid when it’s cold or a liquid when it’s hot,” she said. But the cold wax she uses as a medium has the consistency of butter. She adds pigment to it—oil paint or raw pigments—and then applies it to a surface, where it attaches and hardens.
“I like it because the colors are very intense,” she said. “It’s all about layers of color and texture. It’s a medium that you can just jump into without having a lot of painting experience. Some people use it for representational work, but now it is used mostly for very abstract expressionistic work.”
A native of Greenville County in South Carolina, Jarrard-Dimond has a bachelor’s degree in art from Winthrop College and a master of fine arts degree from Clemson University, where she focused on using textiles to create sculptures.
For most of her career, she worked as a resident artist at workshops around the country, often through the South Carolina Arts Commission and at the Governor’s School for the Arts when it was a summer program. She also served as a designer for several different textile companies, including The Rug Barn in /Abbeville and for Jacquard’s woven home interior products division. She retired from that line of work in 2005 and stopped traveling for residences about three years ago.
These days, she spends most of her time in the studio. She has taken on the occasional commission, such as a large piece that hangs in the library at Tri-County Technical College. And she has had her work in galleries, including a new one in Greenville run by Joel Wilkerson. Her advice about securing gallery representation is first to “make your work the best you can make it.” Then she recommends contacting a gallery to see the kind of work it is showing and to introduce yourself. “You just have to present yourself the very best you can on that initial meeting,” she said. “Sometimes it works, sometimes not.”
In addition to her presentation at the AAG meeting, Jarrard-Dimond will be offering a workshop on cold wax painting at the Anderson Arts Center on March 22-23. More information about the workshop is at https://andersonarts.charityproud.org/EventRegistration/Index/1751. More information about Jarrard-Dimond is at http://terryjarrarddimond.com/.
