Photo by Jonny Grace, 2010
San Francisco artist, Gwen Terpstra, received an M.A. in painting from Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA. in the fall of 2019. She earned a B.A. with an emphasis in printmaking at San Francisco State University, with further studies at California College of Art in graphic design, and studies in painting at the San Francisco Art Institute, and U.C. Berkeley.
Terpstra cultivated a singular, award-winning, music oriented graphic design business called Terpstra Design, San Francisco, which she operated for over 25 years. Her personal painting and sculpture, rooted in expressionism, and post minimalism, arrives within the context of her long career in graphic design. It utilizes type and fragments of type as abstract formal elements with a constructivist aesthetic, with a nod to social theorist Yuval Noah Harari’s ideas about technological control. Her work has been shown in venues locally and internationally, including, The SF Art Institute, Michael Martin Gallery, SF, The Somar Gallery, SF, Kalhasa jazz venue, Palermo, Sicily, Streamline Salon, San Francisco, and her MA thesis exhibition at SCAD.