Some things seem predestined.  Western artist Jack Terry was destined to record in vivid colors and muted hues, cool shadows and brilliant sunlight the intricate detail of the Western landscape and its cowboys and horses and cattle.  Jack is a contemporary man with the memory of yesterday -- and of today -- in his brush and the colors of the West n his palette.  He paints what he loves and knows best -- cowboys and the country they ride.
     Terry was born in the West Texas town of Sweetwater, 43 years ago.  This was part of the land once claimed by the buffalo and wolf, the Kiowas and Comanches, until half-wild cowboys drove wild cattle to these broad plains.  It was then that the buffalo and redman disappeared.  Their time here had passed.  But cattle and cowboys came and stayed.
     Barbed wire and pickup trucks brought tamer breeds of men and horses and cattle.  But if one sees with an artist's eye -- the eye of a painter such as Jack Terry -- cow country is always toward the horizon, just around the bend in the river, there in the darkness beyond the campfire's flickering glow.  Far and wide, that west is still alive when one just looks.  And it is reflected on Terry's canvases.
     Ranching and art are in Jack Terry's blood.  Both of his grandfathers were cowboys and ranchers.  Jack absorbed their stories of good horses and wlid cattle.  It was his grandmother, Etna Terry, who encourage him to draw and paint those images.
     "My grandmother was a landscape artist for as lon gas I can remember, and it fascinated me to watch her paint.  When I was nine, I entered a piece in the Scurry County Art Show and won an award.  That did it.  I was hooked."
     When you like what you're doing, it's not work, so painting has never been work to Terry.  After high school, in preparation for the day he might have to get "a real job," he entered the University of Texas, where he later graduated with a degree in advertising.  While attending school, he painted and sold his work through The Country Store Gallery in Austin.  It was there that he met the noted Western artists Melvin Warren.
     "He was a great inspiration to me.  I studied his work,  and he was kind enough to give me pointers.  Later, I attended workshops that he and James Boren taught in Kerrville in connection with the Cowboy Artists Association."
     While in school, Terry also did day work on local ranches.  When he graduated, he knew that his calling was western art, and he began painting full time.  His friend, Larry Mason, was foreman of the Head of the River Ranch, founded by noted Quarter Horse breeder Billy Anson near San Angelo.  Terry stayed there for a while and cowboyed and painted.  Perhaps that quiet time with horses and cattle and clear sunrises and glorious sunsets actually got him on track for his art career.
     He and his wife, Mary, now live on a small ranch southwest of Kerrville, Texas, where they raise cattle and exotic deer.  Every day, Jack saddles one of his Quarter Horses and rides out across the high hills and through the rough country to look over his stock and check his fences and water troughs.  It is in this solitude, when the hot sun beats down on his shoulders or the winter wind whistles down his collar as he rides at an easy jog, that visions crowd his mind and are carefully stored away until they can be transferred to canvas.  These quiet times restore Terry's creative battery.
     That charge must be a powerful one, for Jack is a prolific artist and creates 30 to 40 oil paintings each year.  "I sell originals through several galleries...  The Country Store Gallery, the New Jackson-Kirkland Gallery in Santa Fe, and the Texas Art Gallery in Dallas, Texas.  300 dealers across the country carry prints of my paintings, and I make about 30 appearances each year at print signings."
     Jack and Mary operate their own business -- Jack Terry Fine Arts Publishing -- located on the ranch.  They have nine employees.  Jack's studio is in their home, and the office is in a separate building.  Mary oversees the business end of the company.  "She is the life-blood of this business," Jack says.  In a second building is the frame shop, where frames are custom-made for the paintings and prints.  Prints of 29 of Terry's paintings are available on paper and on canvas.
     "We do about 250 to 500 prints of each original we reproduce.  I highlight each of the canvas prints with oils to give them more texture.  I sell strictly through galleries and dealers, and I do a lot of commission work for clients who have special needs.  For the most part, they are cowboy scenes, but two or three times a year, I break away and paint something entirely different."
     Examples of that are Jack's "cityscapes," detailed views of turn-of-the-century towns.  "These take research to get the details right, but they have been well received," he says.
     "I'm looking forward to some challenging projects I have planned this year.  Right now, I'm working on a 4'x5' painting -- a Rocky Mountain scene with cowboys bringing the horses down from the high country in an early snow."  With every stroke of his brush, Jack is there -- breathing the crisp, cold air -- hearing the snow crunch beneath his horse's hooves -- tugging his hat low to shade his eyes from the glare.  Perhaps that is why Jack Terry loves to paint...the beauty of the West that is stored in his mind materializes on the canvas before him for all to see.

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"End of a Long Day"
24" x 36"

"Big Night in a Small Town"
24" x 20"

"Busy Times"
16" x 20"