​

​About The Artist, Terry Girard​

​Terry has been an artist at heart for most of his life. Art, in all its mediums, interested him from a young age.

Terry spent years drawing with pencils and pens, tearing up his work when he was young because he felt it wasn’t good enough.

His mother used to tell him “you shouldn’t tear that up, you just might get paid to do that one day!”. At the time, Terry thought

she was just saying what he wanted to hear. Most of Terry's early hobby work involved cartooning and wildlife art, followed by painting.

But when Terry met a friend who was a tattoo artist, he was hooked, and Terry's foray into the world of professional art began.

Terry opened his first tattoo shop, Dermographic Osmosis, in 2004 and never looked back. This was quickly followed by a second shop

being opened up in 2008. Now, with 30 years of tattooing experience under his belt. "I loved being able to express myself and, for the first time, 

I loved working on my own terms. I have always worked well under pressure and enjoyed a challenge.

I was getting paid to do art just like my mom had said. Who knew?"

​

Terry's work with metals always paralleled his artistic interests. His grandfather and uncle taught him lots of skills and he started modifying

bicycles at a young age, and then took metal shop in school.​ "I was good at it, and my first job was in a machine shop with my uncle

during the Summers. I always felt very confident working with metal, and enjoyed making something from a piece of raw material."

​

Terry's art and metal working passions, however, never intermingled until he started building and modifying motorcycles and cars - a hobby that would last him many years.

He had seen metal sculptures and had always thought it would be exciting and challenging, but hadn't pursued it. In 2023, that all changed. Terry built a small sculpture of a fisherman for his son. "I really enjoyed doing it, but needed more of a challenge and decided that I would build a big eagle sculpture because I didn’t know if he could."

 

Terry's debut piece as TG Metalworks, the Empty Nester was built entirely from reclaimed metals that he either found or were donated to him by friends in the car and hot rod communities. The piece took him 8 months to complete - 955 hours from start to finish. By the end of the Empty Nester, Terry was, once again, hooked.
"I loved it. The challenge, the hard work, the reward of seeing something I created from nothing. I started finding and collecting metal anywhere I could find it. I found metalworking sites online and posted my work and began checking out other artists who are at the top of their game - wow! I really love this stuff."​

​

The Empty Nester earned Terry a spot at the 2024 Kelowna Art Walk as the featured artist, and is currently on display at the Summerhill Pyramid Winery.​​

​

As for what's next? Terry has several new and exciting sculpture pieces on the way, and dreams of many more.