Dale TerBush as "The Artist of Light"

Some people are just born with talent. Dale TerBush is one of those people, and he demonstrated that talent through his art show at Exclusive Collections Gallery.

The intimate show took place on the Saturday evening of September eighteenth at Exclusive Collections Gallery in Fashion Valley. A gargantuan canvas dominated the room, in front of which sat Dale TerBush, self-taught painter of fifty-six years. Painting nonstop, he shared his experiences as an artist, discussing his preference for acrylics, his beginning at the age of five, and his passion for writing and the arts. Guests enjoyed the opportunity to converse one-on-one with the painter, ask him questions, and take pictures.

The six-by-ten foot canvas mesmerized the onlookers with its painstaking detail and its representation of light and depth. Observing his work, I immediately recalled Edmund Burke’s On the Sublime and the Beautiful: “Mere light is too common a thing to make a strong impression on the mind, and without a strong impression nothing can be sublime. But such a light as that of the sun, immediately exerted on the eye, as it overpowers the sense, is a very great idea.” It is with this strong impression that the viewer is spellbound, as Dale Terbush constructs a scene harvested from the sun’s outstretched rays. His images are like a dream, in that they seem so convincingly real, yet like nothing seen before.

TerBush’s landscapes appeal to the imagination with their inception in the mind of the artist. Upon seeing the amount of detail granted to each square inch of that impressive canvas, it becomes difficult to believe that the landscape does not exactly imitate some real location abroad. The artist explained how many people claim that they know where one of his mountains exists, but he always denies that possibility. He rationalizes that upon looking at one of his paintings, their emotions draw them back to a memory of some similar place. After all, with an image so lifelike, it is easy to be drawn in to Dale TerBush’s creative mindset.