About

Today, I call myself an artist-photographer, but over the course of my life, I have been the proverbial jack of many trades. Above all, and for the longest sustained time, I was an educator with a suburban high school that apparently had far better than average students. I taught visual arts and film photography, advised thirty-four student designed and produced yearbooks, scenic designed/directed and/or produced forty-three mainstage productions as well as writing dozens of melodramas and children's pieces all of which were performed at least once.

Looking back, while in college, as a freshman for the second time, I began to “moonlight” as a graphic designer for that institution, under the name of John Terry Studio. I eventually became an editor or art editor for the college's literary and visual arts publications. After college, my wife and I continued under that name for about twenty years, marketing a line of railfan related products based on my drawings and paintings as well as commissioned cover art for numerous railroad themed books.

Along the way, I've designed a variety of objects, produced by myself and others for my own use, of which I'm kind of proud. If you are interested in these things, the highlighted words, above will take you to those pages.

One day, as I was nearing retirement, the costume heads from over twenty years of children’s theater productions, suggested that we go down to the theater and have our portrait made. Out of sight, but not far from my heart are a few of the scores of talented actors and stage crew who helped bring these characters to life.

John Terry Studio began as a billing address for work I produced as a student for my college. Several years after graduation my wife Joan and I revived that name when we began producing rail-themed material. These items were sold through ads in several national railroad publications as well as the gift shop that Joan operated at the steam powered Morris County Central Railroad.

Holiday cards became one of our most popular items, and these paintings were enjoyed by railfans around the world. In it’s “second life”, the MCC operated over the tracks of the New York Susquehanna and Western RR. The bridge pictured above, is an earlier view of the same bridge our trains crossed regularly.

It goes without saying that a Christmas card should have a snowy setting, and all did, with the exception of the SP Daylight (bottom right). Looking back, it’s interesting that this relatively modern Chessy System diesel is the only painting I made where it is actually snowing.

As a painter of mostly historic railroad scenes, I only became interested in trains as an adult. In order to paint locomotives that had finished their useful lives when I was a child, a large collection of old camera negatives was amassed so that no detail would be missed.

Like most all artists, I like to design stuff and give it my special touch. Also like most people, I am unfortunately, not the expert of all trades. This has brought me into contact with numerous artists and crafts persons, among them carpenters, stone masons, gardeners, wood carvers and one particular blacksmith, Bob.

It starts with a sketch which is refined, and then interpreted in steel and stainless.

While my favorite locomotive rests in a rail museum in New Jersey, I’ve designed a replica to adorn this metal gate. From sketch to refined drawing my #385 is at home pulling up to a replica storage shed railroad station. On time, as usual.
Below at the right is a set of three lamps designed around the flame azaleas that bloom each spring in my forest.

This gate reflects some of my family history as well as some of my favorite things that live and grow here. Yes, dogwoods and trumpet vine bloom in different seasons.