After 40 years not painting, Terry Browder's back in the saddle again

Most often, art on display at a gallery or museum is viewed while standing.

Maybe the head tilts in study, or the viewer walks closer to the piece - a painting or a sculpture, to see more detail.

"Art in Context" at the Center for Contemporary Art is unusually welcoming.

It's a second-floor exhibition of paintings by Terry Browder. And it includes furniture.

Uniquely, paintings have been incorporated into home settings.

Tables, cabinets, sofas, chairs.

You just want to sit, relax and pretend this is your house.

The exhibit ends June 4, so you need to get by soon. It's a respite from the windy, hot days of May that fortunately were interrupted this week by cooler temperatures and rain.

There's more significance to this show. Browder studied art in college but pursued other career interests. He did not paint for 40 years.

The works in this exhibit are new, most done within the past year.

So while the exhibition is in itself welcoming, it also serves as "Welcome back to art, Terry Browder."

You know, Terry paints

Browder is the founder of Sayles Ranch Guest Houses, the most noticeable at the corner of Sayles Boulevard and South Seventh Street.

If you've never met him, you've surely driven by this historic home. Or attended an event there or, better, stayed the night.

He has been doing that for the past 20 years.

"I've always been interested in interior design," he said.

His interest in art goes back to taking instruction during his middle and high school years.

In 1972, he came to Abilene and earned a BFA  and a master's in art education, both from Abilene Christian University.

"And I never left. I never could figure how to make enough money to buy a bus to get out of here," he said, laughing.

Instead of art, he entered real estate.

So, "I didn't paint for 40 years," he said. Still, "in my mind and my soul, I've been interested in doing creative stuff all the time I wasn't physically painting.

"The Sayles Ranch Guest House was one manifestation of that. One of the most recent ones."

He is known as a designer, but perhaps not as Terry Browder, the artist.

This exhibition, he said, brings that talent to the forefront.

"I always believed I would paint again, and it didn't really feel like I had stopped," he said. "It was just ... tomorrow. And so, tomorrow finally came."

Painting returned like riding a bicycle.

"It was like I never stopped," he said. "I was a little hesitant to begin with but I had been a pretty serious artist in college and grad school. It's not a hobby."

How the show came to be

Browder said CCA contacted him about participating in a show, though he is not a gallery member.

The plan was to have a member show downstairs, focusing on western themes, and a non-member show upstairs. Would he be interested in displaying a couple of pieces?

Browder admitted that he was mildly interested. But then CCA director Rebecca Bridges offered him more.

"Hey, if you want the whole upstairs gallery, I'll give it to you," he said she told him. "Now that kind of changes the playing field. And she said bring furniture and do what you do. I hadn't really thought about that, either. I thought, now this is broadening up to something I can get my teeth into and offer the public and the center a new twist."

Browder said that would solve his "identity crisis because people don't know me as an artist. I thought this is a good opportunity for the art community and the community as well to transition their concept of me from designer to painter."

He has been productive in his painting, so that wasn't going to be an issue.

And neither was providing furniture and home furnishing. The Browder home is a 1925 Pueblo Revival style. They have a room called "Adobe Walls Studio.

"It's basically an art gallery that we lived in," he said. And, basically, it was moved downtown to the gallery using a moving van.

"We literally moved half the furniture out of our house," he said, laughing. "I was a little bit unfamiliar on how it would all pull together, but I knew that it worked at home."

Browder's work has a definite feel of the Southwest, so it works well as a companion to the show downstairs.

There is a religious element to it, and Browder said a year ago, a three-tiered bell tower with a cross inspired by a chapel in San Patricio, New Mexico, was added to their home.

So, for something he wasn't expecting, Browder said the exhibition has turned out well. At the artist reception a month ago, he said 400-500 people turned out as well.

The exhibit is not a sale, he said, but about half of his pieces have sold. Some prices to$18,000.

Browder said his art is labor intensive.

"I don't splash things out quickly," he said. He paused.

"Even the most abstract pieces are not something your dog would do," he said, chuckling.

He didn't write the books on display or create the weavings, and Browder didn't do the string ball near the exhibition entrance. String balls is a collectible subfield in the folk art genre, he said.

That was done years ago by wife Laura's great-grandfather, Robert Hines, in Abilene. He gathered string from McLarty's grocery store near near Abilene Christian College, back in the day, and Piggly Wiggly.

"He worked on it for years and years," Browder said. "It's our family heirloom."

Visitors to the Terry Browder exhibit will consider the entire exhibition to be just that.

Greg Jaklewicz is editor of the Abilene Reporter-News and general columnist. If you appreciate locally driven news, you can support local journalists with a digital subscription to ReporterNews.com. 

This article originally appeared on Abilene Reporter-News: After 40 years not painting, Terry Browder's back in the saddle again