About The Artist Terry Guyer

It all started by using the left over paint-by-number paint

Terry Guyer was born and raised in the Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1976, he moved to San Francisco, for its milder weather and historic charm and now has his home and studio, just a short distance south of San Francisco, in the stimulating creative environment of Silicon Valley.

Terry Guyer is a member of the California Art Club, Allied Artists of America, The National Sculpture Society, and is President and on the Board of Directors of the Artist's Guild of San Francisco. He received his BFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design, which included a year at Brighton Polytechnic Art Facility, in Sussex, England.

Terry Guyer is an award-winning painter and sculptor with artwork in many international, private, corporate, public and museum collections.

What Terry has to say about his work: 

I work successive layers of translucent and opaque oil paint to the point that the sense of paint application gives way to where the painting has a life of its own. I paint realism because it gives purpose and structure to the visual sensation of color and value being created. The impression created by the paint handling gives context to the realistic imagery and together it builds a more complete and satisfying visual experience.

Painting is a journey for my mind and, I believe, brings the viewer of the final painting along for the ride. The longer I look at my subject the more I see. As I paint, this new knowledge informs the painting.

Paint effects are complicated and enhanced with successive layers of oil color applied after a previous session’s paint has dried. I apply paint in translucent veils of color and then paint into that with other translucent or opaque applications of color which, when combined – the wet color and areas of dried color, only partially covered – create colors and sensations of luminosity that transcends ordinary pigment awareness and leads the mind back to the representation of the subject – temporarily suspending the impression that one is looking at paint on linen – and gives way to the impression one is looking at a new reality.