Workhouse Artist of the Week: Terry Anstrom

After 25 years teaching high school math, 15 in Fairfax County, Terry Anstrom has returned to her first love -- art.  The watercolorist is a featured artist during May in Building W-6 of the Workhouse Arts Center. 

Anstrom paints primarily flowers and fauna, often close-up, and always a petal or leaf at a time.  She enhances her paintings with techniques including color glazes, layering of color, background washes, lifting, and negative painting.  The richness of color and light are central in her work.

Anstrom has always loved drawing, and as a child her creations were featured in displays at a local library in Colorado.  “It was nice to be praised for something that I did, but I never thought of it as something from which I would make a living,” she said.  But her love of art did influence her life as a mother and a teacher.  “I didn’t have much time, but I fit creativity into my lifestyle where I could,” she said.  She decorated her home, quilted for her sons, crafted, and cooked. 

At work, she considered all three learning styles – visual, auditory, and kinesthetic – in her teaching.  “I taught my kids very hands on and visually,” she said.  “I told them to tell me if they needed a picture of what I was talking about, and I provided them with the relationships of how things fit together.”

“When my boys went to college I had more time, and I began to think about what I would do after I retired,” she said.  Soon Anstrom enrolled in a class at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria.  From there she began studying one-on-one at the Workhouse Arts Center.  Anstrom retired in 2007, won her first award in 2009 for her painting Palette Rose, submitted her application to the Workhouse in November 2009, and was accepted in January 2010.

Although Terry has been painting only a few years, she has earned several honors. She was recently juried into the Potomac Valley Watercolorists (PVW). Her painting, Amaryllis, featured at the PVW Green Spring Gardens Art Show in Alexandria through June 26, won an honorable mention.  Another of her painting’s, Ruffled Hibiscus,  is included in the Virginia Watercolor Society’s exhibition through June 4 in Kilmarnock.  

 “I just love it here at the Workhouse Arts Center,” said Anstrom.  “I meet with other artists, paint more, and teach.” Anstrom teaches one or two students at a time.  “I love to get my students from where they are and take them to another level,” she said.  “I leaned something valuable in my art studies, and that is anybody can learn.”

She encourages all women to consider what they are going to focus on, and then persist.  “My message to women is that there are always things you can do.  It’s a matter of having the courage to try and then sticking with it.  It takes persistence and practice, and won’t happen overnight, but you will blossom.”