After a long career in management as a senior civilian with the Department of the Army, Terry retired in 2008 as the Deputy Garrison Commander at Fort Gordon, Georgia, and in a White House ceremony he subsequently received a national leadership award from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. He has resolved to be “the best retiree he can be” and has made art the primary focus of his life in retirement.
He has painted for many years, almost exclusively in oils, and he has worked under the guidance and mentorship of Dick Dunlap, David Mascaro, and other prominent artists in the Central Savannah River Area. He has attended workshops conducted by Anne Blair Brown, Aline Ordman, Mike Rooney, John David Wissler, Jim Swanson, and William Kocher, and he has been strongly influenced and inspired by the work of Kevin McPherson, David Leffel, and Jose Salvaggio. He had a one-man show in 2011 at the Kroc Center in Augusta, and he has exhibited individual works in the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art, the Morris Museum of Art, the Aiken Artists Guild Members’ Show, and other venues. In 2011, one of his landscapes was awarded “Honorable Mention” in the AAG Members’ Show, and in 2012, another of his landscapes received the won the William Colgate “Best Aiken Scene” award. He is a member of the Mascaro Art Group and is represented by the Art on Broad gallery in Augusta, Georgia. He also exhibits work in the Countersync showroom, in Augusta. He is a member of Oil Painters of America.
Terry is a native of Montgomery, Alabama, and a graduate of the University of Alabama. He began his career with the Army in 1971 at Fort Benning, Georgia, and he subsequently served at Fort Monroe, Virginia. In 1986 he began work at Fort Gordon and has lived in Augusta since that time. In addition to his work as an artist, Terry is a docent at the Morris Museum of Art, and he is on the faculty of the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art, where he teaches landscape and still-life oil painting and perspective for visual artists. He plays the piano and is learning the guitar. He also enjoys reading and playing Contract Bridge. Terry is married and has three daughters, three sons-in-law, eight grandchildren, one very spoiled Boykin Spaniel, and a madcap cat.
Terry Smith 