Intuitive painter is used frequently to describe painters, I suppose I fit in that category. When first approaching a painting I have no preliminary ideas, sketches, or plan for an image. Like many abstract or semi-abstract painters I start by laying down color and shapes freely, always intrigued by how colors react to one another. Sometimes I arrive at a stimulating image fairly quickly but need more surface work, which generally means sacrificing parts of the painting that please me in order to get more coherence in the entire piece. In this working out period I’m always searching for new directions, something I don’t know yet. I can get irritated, anxious, lost - like I’ve really lost the recipe. Incredible - as much as I have been painting, it still happens. Usually I have to hit this wall so to speak and realize AGAIN, it’s happening, and I lighten up, let go, even if I have to charge at the painting, scrape half the paint off, cover up parts I’ve worked on for a long time. Letting go and allowing intuition to take over is when the best work happens. In the past few years I have introduced painting on paper with water based paint into my daily studio routine. It’s a whole different ball game after years of working with oil on linen. This practice has been nothing short of enlightening for me. The immediacy, spontaneity, different absorption, gave me another angle to experiment in all senses - texture, form, subject. I think mostly there is more abandonment, allowance, and playfulness in my more recent work. Artist Steve Gibson once wrote “I really enjoy looking at Terry Ekasala’s work. Her halting line and elusive color combinations seem to always have just the right amount of deliberateness and ambiguity.” Both intentionally and unintentionally the works carry bits of suggestions from the preoccupation of my daily life and interests. 

Born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, Terry Ekasala graduated from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In 1983, she set up her first studio at the Clay Hotel and Youth Hostel on Espanola Way in Miami Beach, a broken down palace of art deco dreams. Ekasala became a member of the Artifacts Art Group, which staged weekly events at Miami’s Fire and Ice nightclub. She was also part of a group of graffiti artists whose work on abandoned buildings was featured in the Miami Herald and as background in major advertising campaigns. 

In 1987, Ekasala moved to Paris and set up a studio in Belleville, the colorful 20th Arrondissement at La Forge where she was part of a diverse artistic community that organized the first artist squat or reclaimed studio space to become legal in Paris. During this time, her style underwent numerous changes, moving from figurative to abstract, and she exhibited widely in Paris, Berlin, and New York.

In 2001, Ekasala moved to Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. She has exhibited work at Catamount Arts in St. Johnsbury and the Burlington Center for the Arts (BAC) and has also shown work at the Metalstone Gallery in New York City, Matter & Light in Boston, and in 2019, the Piermarq Gallery in Sydney, Australia. In 2021 she had a solo exhibition at the Hall Art Foundation in Reading, Vermont.

Ekasala’s work is in numerous private collections. She resides with her family in East Burke, Vermont and creates large and small abstract paintings in what she calls her dream studio looking out over a nearby mountainside.

visit the artist’s website and find more of her work on Instagram