BSED ART FEATURE | TERRI PORTA

About Terri 

Terri Porta is local Billings girl who is graduating this semester with a Bachelor of Fine Art from MSUB. She has recently returned from a 6-week International Artist Residency in France and has returned with a new understanding about herself and her personal connection through art.

Artist Statement:

“One of the reasons I have such deep respect for abstraction, is that the human soul is always searching for answers. We are constantly consumed by the tidal wave of information.

We yearn to unplug to stop to breathe in and out to rest.

Where are we search for connection gets lost in the sea of ideas and commercial answers branded for us with plastic coating and clean crisp lines.

I think we must go to nature, walk among quiet, breathe in the sunrise and lean on an ancient tree. We must lose our need for searching and racing around for survival. We must sit in the light of dawn’s slow rising. There we can find rest for our restless soul under the brightest morning stars. Their light has shown for eons. Time is not a concept to them, just being, burning and spinning. The race to find ourselves, stands still under the vastness of a glimmering heaven. Our scurry and hurry stills in the title pool of universal memory.

Abstraction in painting stands alone in this place. Offering not what the human soul already has, but what it longs for. Abstraction is a meditation. A place to visually rest and contemplate the bigger meaning of life. In some small way, abstraction offers us an entrance into the hall of time and contemplative truths. There we are granted a peek behind the universes’ curtain, with a special invitation to consume until we are satiated. Or rather sit until we lose our own greatness and arrogance in the warm bath of acceptance. To surrender control is not so great a loss. It can help us finally see the beauty of our human essence and frailty.”