Terry was born in Duluth Minnesota and credits his older brother for recognizing his talent for art at a young age and shepherding his ability. Terry received his BFA from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, thereafter, serving a brief stint in the commercial art field before pursuing his passion for wildlife art full-time.“My pursuit has been to capture my perspective of nature and to develop my own artistic identity. I want there to be no ambiguity, I want the viewer to immediately recognize my work through my style.”“I chose working in pastel’s back in the late 80s as a means to loosen up from a photo realistic style. Specifically I worked in oils and my subject was the human figure. Like many I wanted to see just how realistic I could draw or paint. When I had achieve my goal I realized a need to become more expressive, more painterly as it were, to develop my own artistic identity. I needed a change and a challenge and pastels proved to be the medium I was looking for. Being self-taught, I had no constraints on the perceived limits of the Medium. I found pastels lent themselves perfectly to a loose drawing style, allowing me to add a sense of life and motion to the image.”