ARTIST
ILIAD TERRA
“LINES AND COLOURS REVEAL THE LIGHT WITHIN…”
Iliad Terra was born in London, UK, and lives and works in Washington, DC. He studied Fine Arts under Anne Truitt, and earned his Master’s in Architecture from the University of Maryland. He is currently CEO and Managing Principal at alfa8, a world-renowned architecture and design firm focused on AI-assisted design. Iliad’s designs have won numerous awards.
In his recent work, Iliad’s designs increasingly have been exploring the idea of creating spaces and environments that tell stories. As part of this shift in his work, Iliad started creating two dimensional concepts and paintings, which have evolved in the past few years into the Etheric Veil series.
From early childhood, drawing and painting has been an integral part of Iliad’s world as a way to explore, escape, and find meaning, and often to heal himself. Early on, Iliad had an intuitive ability to connect and see paintings appear to him as visions of fields of color and forms. He would close his eyes and see complete paintings and narratives in his mind, and he would transpose them onto paper and canvas.
“It’s become compelling, almost like a calling for me to paint and create these visions on canvas, bringing forth a child-like intuitive wonder, albeit with scars, perspective, and ultimately a deeper meditation, diving within myself to bring these paintings to the surface as gems.”
Iliad has traveled extensively throughout the world, from South Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa, to Europe and throughout the Americas, all of which has given his work a broad multifaceted flavor. He has researched and explored diverse philosophies and cultures and religions, investigating paths and patterns underpinning our cities, cultures, and ultimately the human story. This experience has given Iliad’s paintings a unique atmospheric aerial perspective.
VISION
Iliad’s artistic vision spans a vast array of expressions, from lines and colours to figurative narratives, abstract washes, architecture, words, and animated and motion graphic storytelling. There is one essential and common thread: to describe our journey from the mundane to the divine.
This hero’s journey is expressed in the three series of work Iliad is producing now, Matter, Matrix and Ether, each with its own unique and distinct exploration and methods of creation and presentation.
Matter explores our material world, the narrative of consciousness, and the collective ethos of popular cultures and our political and social struggles to know ourselves
Matrix delves deep into the underlying codes and matrices that define the manifested realm, and at the same time hint at the hidden and numinous.
Ether is the real of faith and relation to the divine and the invisible, to that which envelops us, the timeless, the dissolution of self to Self.
The Mythos series is about atmospheric journeys across time and space, and conscious and unconscious narratives, capturing moments through the medium of art and paint
The paintings express the multidimensionality of our beings, with each piece telling a story of the journey of self and the collective as epic snapshots of moments that are at once fleeting and eternal, simultaneously the intersection of chance and choice, and the quest of the hero through karma and will. Each painting is a visual story of the mythic in each of us. The ongoing series forms a larger narrative about the human experience.
Additionally, the paintings are spiritual dialogues and meditations about healing, often touching on personal struggles, explorating through the act of painting as prayers.
Iliad’s Ether paintings and drawings oscillate between aerial flights and deep dives to the center, over mythical landscapes of past and future worlds, while delving into the subconscious and ethereal waters and oceans and the firmament, conversing with the divine in the mundane.
Iliad paints with intention while at the same time letting the canvas and paint guide the process and carve paths, as if casting an oracle of I-Ching, trusting the co-creative process with the Universe to unfold through the medium of paint.
“Icarus is the journey of father and son, and of letting go. It’s especially a personal journey for me, similar to the story of Dedalus and Icarus, of my son and I, capturing the flight of adventure and risk, suffering and courage, through the folds and veils of unknown worlds, seeking light through undulating eternity of color and forever encroaching darkness. This painting was especially cathartic for me as I painted it on the eve of my son’s embarking on a difficult and uncertain quest to find his inner light.”
And in many ways, Icarus brings the story home to every parent, as they navigate the trials and tribulations of youth, especially as a reflection of the current struggles of our nation, the healing power of myth from the time of Icarus to the age of AI…
Myth, in its multifaceted and multidimensional perspective, reveals powerful, eternal stories that we each experience, timeless stories that repeat with every birth and death. And so, the Ether paintings are windows through the medium of color and line that allow us to look into eternal aspects of our selves and lives. At once showing that we are not alone in our struggles, and perhaps charting courses that offer hope, and a subtle mean with which we can navigate across our individual landscapes.
The Ether series are snapshots that may bring revelation to the viewer, consciously and subconsciously. And at other times serve as invitations for meditation and introspection, utilizing the energetic frequency of color and light to transmute healing vibration through subtle conversations with the viewer.
Additionally, the paintings are spiritual dialogues and meditations about healing, often touching on personal struggles, explorating through the act of painting as prayers.
Iliad’s Ether paintings and drawings oscillate between aerial flights and deep dives to the center, over mythical landscapes of past and future worlds, while delving into the subconscious and ethereal waters and oceans and the firmament, conversing with the divine in the mundane.
Iliad paints with intention while at the same time letting the canvas and paint guide the process and carve paths, as if casting an oracle of I-Ching, trusting the co-creative process with the Universe to unfold through the medium of paint.
