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From toys to art:
Terence Healy looks to bring his vision to the Fireplace Gallery
The Advocate
As an engineer, Terence Healy’s life was out of balance. Then, slowly over the course of a decade, he was drawn to the “intangible world of art,” as he calls it, and began to re-embrace things he knew as a child.
Healy now finds inspiration at the bottom of old toy bins in thrift stores.
“Toys have loads of free time to give you, and have the wonderful attribute of holding a pose while you paint,” said Healy.
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He said turning to painting was likely a reaction of his intense engineering studies at the University of Texas, and he saw art as a way of getting away from the analytical side of life.
“Too much emphasis on the mechanical and mathematical side of things,” Healy said.
He decided to take a year off from his engineering program and learn everything he could about art.
“I plunged into studio courses in Florence, Italy,” said Healy. “My progress was slow at first, learning all the practical aspects of paints, substrates, brushwork, etc. Years later, after working as a designer for oil-field equipment, I decided that I had to follow my dream; so I quit the engineering field and embraced being an artist.”
The treasures he finds buried in thrift store toy bins regularly become works of art for what they have to “say,” Healy said.
“I bring them home and paint them interacting with the other toys I’ve found,” said Healy. “As I compose them for a new painting, there will be a moment when each toy’s position will seem right, as if it has something to say, or has a certain vibe that resonates with me. I love this moment. That’s when I begin each painting.”
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Though he grew up in Arizona, Healy decided not to return to his home state when he finished his degree at the University of Texas. He followed his girlfriend to Portland, and now works part-time as a caregiver at a developmentally disabled group home, along with being a full-time artist.
“I’m primarily a portrait artist, because I love to paint people,” said Healy. “I love to look at a face, at the human figure, how it moves, and how it expresses all sorts of things. All people have some element of dignity to them, have an energy, have stories to tell, and I feel these things when I look at them.
“I turn to toys because I see and feel these same qualities in them.”
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