The Burren
The Burren

The Burren #64B

Regular price $6,500.00
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The Burren paintings were inspired by the landscape of Western Ireland. I stayed in a quaint fishing village for four months where I painted every day. In Ballyvaughan and the Burren mountains my eyes focused on the beauty of the place. In such an overwhelming place of beauty I consumed the vastness of the hills, valley and sea. When I came home I brought with me 11 oil paintings, a sketchbook filled with watercolors and 4 drawings. More importantly, my internal suitcase contained the spirit of the place. And that spirt continued to inspire me for more than a year after my return.

The stormy weather and rain over the mountain of the painting entitled Burren #00, (First of the Burren paintings that began the series in January of 2011) was captured by swiftly moving brush strokes created through the fast dancing movement of my hand that held a cheap 4" house painting brush saturated with oil and color. I prefer house painters brushes from the hardware store to the expensive artists brushes. I don't give a damn about them which enables me to slash and bend the bristles to the force of my energy. The grayness of the far off mountains caught in the haze of a downpour needed to be subdued and appear distant, and a squeegee was drawn across it's surface to blur the rocky cliffs. The mustard colored pigment represented winter grass blowing in the wind.

I tend to work in series. Often a theme or direction evolves from another series or it will come about as a reference to a personal experience. In this painting I was taken with the evening sun going down on Galway Bay. In the foreground is a lone tree growing out of the rocky surface on the shoreline. The paint surface is thicker and applied with large brushes and a silk screen squeegee. I enjoy moving and blending paint with unconventional tools. The colors are forced together without conscious thought or control. For me control is arrogant. I look at my approach to painting as opening myself to forces of creativity that are caught rather than conceived by me. I'm a conduit of sorts. I don't stand before a subject and copy it. I breath it in, consume it and let it flow out of me onto canvas. My paintings are a gift from the Universe. What comes through me and appears in this world has never been seen before.

40" W x 34" H oil on canvas

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STATEMENT
My paintings are often called abstractions, they are not. They are the non-objective landscapes of my inner being, my attempt to move into a greater reality. Bodidharma, the bringer of Zen to China from India said, "Using the mind to look for reality is delusion. Not using the mind to look for reality is awareness. Freeing oneself from words is liberation."

BIOGRAPHY
Terrence Coffman has diverse artistic talents. Coffman is an accomplished artist, author, musician/songwriter, and an internationally recognized leader in art education. He studied at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He was the recipient of two Ford Foundation grants that helped forge his studies at the two schools.
He has received citations from U.S. Senator Herbert Kohl and Former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson for his dedication to the visual arts and education in Wisconsin. In 1995, President Clinton invited Coffman to the White House to attend the prestigious National Medal of Arts awards ceremony. That same year, he was awarded a fellowship at the Lacoste School of Art in France were he taught and conducted research for his novel on Vincent van Gogh. In 2001 Terrence Coffman received the Frank Kirkpatrick Award from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation and he is the 2008 recipient of the Laird Art Leadership Award from the Melvin Laird Foundation in Washington DC.
Coffman's work has received several awards and has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions.
As a singer/songwriter, he has performed at nightclubs and music venues in Wisconsin, Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C. He has recorded three albums of traditional and contemporary acoustic songs. His most recent CD entitled Songs from Center Avenue Studio is a collection of original songs about family, outlaws, lovers and a dog named Blue.
Coffman is also the author of a fictional novel entitled, A Walk Through the Wheatfields, The Missing Journals of Vincent van Gogh, based on the life of the Post-Impressionist painter. Vantage Press published the novel in December of 2002.