Story by Karen Parr-Moody
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – Clarksville artist Terri Jordan wakes up early — and it’s not simply to brew java. She’s awake by 5 a.m. to paint glamorous ladies.
First Jordan primes her canvas in black or cerulean blue (“I don’t like painting on white,” she says). Then she begins sketching what will become, often, one of her trademark glamor gals who gaze piercingly out of the canvases.
Jordan, who works as the curator of exhibits at The Customs House Museum here, has had her work included in exhibits all over the United States and in private collections both in the U.S. and in Europe. Her fashion background – she studied advertising design at The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City – seeps into her work. Her female subjects are typically dressed in eye-catching fashions and wear the deepest of red lipstick.
These vivid women prompted a representative of the Agora Gallery in New York to compare them to those of the famous French artist, Henri Matisse, saying they were “symbolic statements of serenity, beauty, and ornament. More restful than Matisse’s women, however, Jordan explores a more understated realm of existence and privacy.”
People often ask Jordan when she became an artist and such a question is “a little absurd,” she says.
“I have always been an artist,” she says. “My earliest recollection of drawing was when I was about five years old. I colored our playroom walls with princesses and castles and horses, because I couldn’t find any paper. My mother did not seem to love my mural.”
Jordan’s child, Garrick, keeps an easel next to hers as they both create works of art. Most recently, a series of paintings entitled “Romantic Notions” emanated from Jordan’s easel. These paintings are currently on view in Jordan’s solo show at the Emporium Arts Center gallery in Knoxville, bringing together her trademark women with motifs of flowers.
While both are beautiful, the flowers represented are poisonous and deadly, symbolic of the deepest ironies of the life. Many contain symbols – one painting is flourished with daisies, which symbolize the death of a child.
October marks a sad anniversary for Jordan; it would have been her niece’s fourteenth birthday. She was killed in June of 2012. To honor her birthday, a percentage of the sales from Jordan’s “Romantic Notions” exhibit will go toward purchasing holiday gifts for patients of East Tennessee Children’s Hospital.
Jordan sells her work through the websites www.artwanted.com and www.fineartamerica.com. Through Nov. 30, she will continue to use a percentage of proceeds from the sales toward hospital donations for children.
Karen Parr-Moody began a career as a New York journalist, working as a fashion reporter for Women’s Wear Daily, a beauty editor for Young Miss and a beauty and fashion writer for both In Style and People magazines. Regionally, she has been a writer at The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper and currently writes about arts and culture for Nashville Arts magazine each month.