Dan Terry (1951-present) was born in Key West Florida, son of Frank and Nadine Terry, the eldest of three children by the couple until a divorce when he was six after relocating to upstate New York. An embarrassing family joke focused on his reputed first mural created on a bedroom wall creating a monochrome brown 'caca' portrait of Mickey Mouse inspired by the Disney program watched on the early black and white GE console TV his dad brought home from his work as an electrical engineer at the Schenectady factory.  Like most budding artists much of  his later early work was equally stinky.

Early influences shaped Terry's desire to pursue art as a career. At five Terry watched Disney's Fantasia and was awestruck by both the animation and classical soundtrack. In 1964, on a school art club trip, he found himself dumbfounded in front of Michaelangelo's Pieta, stunned by the paradox of hard Carerra marble and the softness achieved in the carving of the almost imperceptible impression of Mary's fingertips on the skin of Christ. He would from that moment begin his serious quest of achieving some level of mastery as the Renaissance artist.

In high school under the teaching of Chenango Forks' art teacher, Mr. George Bryant, he would be introduced and learned drawing, painting, silk screen production, jewelry making, pottery, and clay sculpture methods. It was in those classes he was also introduced to other art masters including Leonardo DaVinci, Rembrandt, the Impressionists and Vermeer. It was also in high school where his art skills were tapped by the school's acclaimed theater program, where he learned set construction and large scale painting, while also doing some acting and singing in the annual musicals.

At 15 he started work at a local shopper hired on as a lettering and layout artist and soon was involved in prepress graphic art photography and lithographic press operations. On weekends he sang and played bass in a rock and roll garage band inspired by seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. He would continue playing music for the rest of his life, teaching himself first bass, mentored by jazz great Slam Elliot Stewart, then guitar and later keyboards performing in a score of bands in country, jazz, rock, gospel, and in a classical orchestra in his 30's. 

Following high school,  he enrolled in the engineering program at Broome Community College, washing out in his second year, from working two jobs to cover tuition and performing on weekends in a rock band. A short stint in the US Army after being drafted came to an end when traumatic events during training drove him to apply as a conscientious objector on moral grounds with the expectation of being transferred to a non-combat medic role. Instead he was granted a full release with an honorable discharge as his company was among the last to be deployed to Vietnam.

Upon release from military duty he returned to New York where he worked for a few years in a bookstore and then magazine distribution warehouse learning trade secrets of the publishing industry. Weekends and evenings were occupied with involvement as actor, set painter and musical director in local theater productions. Low pay and a period of homelessness drove him to accept a position in the south Texas desert working on a small ranch taking care of cattle and livestock and tending the fields. He earned the going rate equal to what the two immigrant Mexican coworkers did at the time, a whole $25 per week with a $10 food allowance. A fire burned the small cabin he was living in on the ranch destroying most of his earliest paintings done til that time. 

With the GI bill available, he enrolled in Bee County College riding his bike the 17 miles to school a few days a week to take art courses under Texas Impressionist painter Simon Michael. One day while Terry was drawing a tree in class, Michael asked "What do you think your doing?" "Drawing a tree" he replied, upon which Michael corrected, "No you're not...you're drawing your memory of a tree. You want to draw or paint a tree, get your butt outside and look at one. You'll see so much more than your memory ever saw before."

Shortly after he transferred to then Southwest Texas State University where he took art classes under Alex Kritselis and management courses, recognizing that to become a successful artist, a foundation in business would be important foundation. While in school, he took on employment in the local newspapers, running the giant graphics camera, burning plates, making halftones and color separations and helping run the massive Heidelberg press. Those skills would come in handy in his next job upon graduation as a graphics designer for the San Antonio Museum association, which ran three city owned museums; the Witte Museum, the new San Antonio Museum of Art, and the Museum of Transportation and Science. His skills were rapidly expanded to include museum exhibit design, book and publication design and preparation, artifact photography and mural creation.

So by his late twenties, Terry had acquired skills and knowledge in art, design, theater painting, press preproduction and operations, publishing, photography and murals, an eclectic blend that would lead to his current work as an artist which incorporates all of them.

While his mural and art in exhibitions are today seen annually by millions, that history opened him to opportunities in film, television production, digital 3D, music performance, guitar design and restoration; set, film, toy, product and graphic design, writing (author of four books on human sexual chemistry on Amazon, a biography of Lord Byron, and another on David Ogilvy, legendary ad man,  plus several screenplays), and teaching.

His work has won national and regional awards and acclaim in Computer Animation (First place Siggraph Aurora Animation 1985), fine art painting (many in juried and museum exhibitions including full election to the Pastel Society of America, 1984), Teaching (Houston Ad Federation Professor's Award 1989, & First place National Student Advertising Competition faculty advisor 1990, and others), acting and graphic design. 

“Lucky that Way” author Brad Fregger wrote that Terry is “one of the finest 3D artists in the world today.” 

One of the pioneers in CGI 3D modeling and rendering, in recent times he's returned to traditional media with a modern twist with over 200 murals across the state of Texas some incorporating theatrical lighting and sculptural elements. His work has recently been included in the Collectible and Investment Art Guide 2025. 

His work is in the permanent collections of the Witte Museum and the historic Alamo in San Antonio and collections around the USA. His work is represented by the Global Vision Contemporary Fine Arts Gallery in Houston with a one man exhibition scheduled for March 2027 at the Artifact Gallery in New York city.

Education:

BAAS: interdisciplinary management with art direction focus, Texas State University 1984


MA photojournalism, Archeology minor, University of Texas 1990


ABD PhD mass communication/advertising with Psychology minor, University of Texas 1996