Terry Suprean b. 1980 — Terry Suprean is an artist, arts organizer, and educator based in Houston, Texas. He spent his youth embedded in the activist punk movements of the 90’s playing in bands and show promoting in his hometown of New Orleans before moving to Houston in his early 20’s. Before being turned onto visual art by Houston artist Virgil Grotfeldt in undergraduate school, he was a physics major—an influence still felt his experimental, process-based approach to painting and paint making.
His painting process is best understood as an experimental approach to the material nature of paint itself, and the paintings as a genre of diaphanous landscape painting situated within the beginning moments of the Anthropocene. His practice starts with the manufacturing of acrylic paints made from experimental binders that allow for the development of painting processes (what Suprean calls Paint Systems) that reflect environmental processes, and pigments that are mineral-based and sourced from the earth (i.e. mineral and crystal dusts that emit a glittery, holographic glow trapping light inside the painting). The paints Suprean manufactures have various viscosities and chemical properties and are applied layer by layer to canvases laid flat—in this way the paintings build up slowly over time like sedimentary landscapes—by manipulating the way each layer of paint interacts with another (or water) the painting processes begin to mirror geological forces; such as the way tectonic layers shift, oceans carve shorelines, or the way water evaporation effects the life cycle of glaciers. Everything seen in Suprean’s paintings are results of these processes (no brushes are used in their creation)—although some paintings have more finite shapes, these are created by moving thin, fluid layers of paint across the painting’s surface by physically lifting, tiling, pushing, and angling the canvas in repetitive motions slowly staining the shapes into being—and at times, after the paint has dried, by ripping up layers of paint to excavate what is underneath. Suprean’s paintings play in the language and history of abstraction and process art, and are a record of a highly physical interaction between the artist and the canvas—a nuanced dance between the force of the body and paint. In his paintings one can see the influence of color field painting, biomorphic abstraction, and the Gulf Coast landscapes he grew up in—as well as the technologized landscapes of satellite imagery, space telescopes, and the Mars Rovers.
Suprean has worked since 2014 as an art organizer and curator; first through Civic TV, an artist-run gallery space he founded in Houston’s warehouse district dedicated to collaborative curatorial practices and exhibiting new media art and experimental music. After Civic TV closed during the pandemic, he opened Ruth Street Projects in 2022—a small community-centered gallery run out of a spare room in his home. Ruth Street Projects is currently active producing exhibitions for Houston-based artists several times a year. These art organizing projects, influenced by Joseph Beuys’ “Social Sculpture” model, have been as important and essential to Suprean’s practice as his studio work.
