About Terry Schulman
Her Story
Life is beautiful. But those of us who have lived long enough know life really isn’t pretty all the time. A little perspective coupled with God’s grace can change how we look at things. A healthy perspective can shed a light that can make trials and hardships a beautiful pathway to epiphanic growth. This is what Terry discovered in the different mediums of her art.
Early in her career, when she first began to actually believe she was an artist, Terry became obsessed with fine architectural salvage. Suddenly, ceiling-tile tins, old church pews, barn doors or paint-chipped moulding began to catch her eye. Terry started collecting salvage from antique shops and historic homes and barns throughout Loudoun County and the Blue Ridge mountains. Employing acrylics with a little passion, she loved the idea of giving new life to these lost treasures. The idea of rebirth by resurrecting salvage paralleled the Gospel and what Jesus has done for her.
For nearly a decade, she sold her work through interior design boutiques and fine antique shops around Northern Virginia and has developed a following of art lovers and collectors ranging from everyday folks, local people of note to celebrities, such as Robert Duvall, who purchased one of Terry's paintings and then commissioned her for another.
In 2014 Terry's health declined with chronic Lyme disease and a host of other complications; her sicknesses landed Terry completely bedridden for a year-and-a-half and in a wheelchair for three months, rendering her unable to paint. Years later, Terry picked up her paintbrush again as she processed in detail those truly traumatic years. Terry found that not only did her artwork become a very real catharsis but her inner healing manifested itself in much more detailed creations as she explored oil painting as a new medium. She and her husband also combined their talents by publishing a poetry-and-art-book that also explains the backstory behind each composition. The book has done so well, the need for a 2nd printing was necessary less than a year later..
More recently, Terry’s desire is to create art from a new perspective. The idea of turning old and tattered salvage and giving it new life as a beautiful piece of art, led her to a new medium: Stained Glass Mosaics. Picking up “broken pieces” of glass to make something beautiful displays a sense of inner peace and a love for God’s Creation in a “whole” new way.
Terry and her husband, David, have 3 adult children and one daughter-in-law, all of whom are artists, too.
