Terry Urban on His Turn Back to Painting

Terry Urban on the Turn Back to Painting and What Keeps Him Moving

When we interviewed Terry Urban, he kept coming back to one idea. He has always been an artist, even when life made it hard to live that way. He grew up drawing constantly and never really stopped, but for years he had to push art aside to pay rent and stay afloat. He says that battle between what he wanted and what others expected never fully goes away, but he learned to stay with it.

About ten years ago, he made the jump to painting professionally and hasn’t looked back.

This is Terry Urban.

From music to paint

Before painting became the center, music did. Urban spent roughly two decades as a DJ and producer, touring and building a life around sound. Over time it started to feel repetitive and “robotic,” and he noticed he wasn’t getting what he needed creatively. Picking up a paintbrush again cracked something open. He describes it as a clear pivot, the moment he knew painting was the next chapter.

Music never left. He still paints to it every day, and many of his titles come straight from songs and lyrics he loves.

What shaped his visual world

Urban links painting to the same independence he found in skateboarding and surfing. Those sports taught him how to be alone with a challenge, take risks, and keep going until something works. He also grew up obsessed with skateboard graphics, copying them into notebooks and onto walls. That early visual language still shows up in how he builds imagery now.

Place matters too. He calls Cleveland the soul of his work. Growing up in a blue-collar city shaped his focus on working people and underdogs. That spirit, he says, is always in the paintings.

Living in California pushed the palette and subject matter in a new direction. Being surrounded by open land, mountains, and desert life pulled him deep into Western culture, which is now a core lane in his recent work.

Process, blocks, and staying open

His ideas come fast, so he catches them fast. If something hits, especially at night, he writes it down and sketches it right away on paper or in Procreate. If he waits, he loses it.

Creative blocks are real for him. They can last days or months. He pushes through with work ethic, or he steps away and surfs, hikes, or resets his head until the next idea arrives.

What art is for him

Urban doesn’t talk about painting as a brand or a career strategy. He talks about it as survival. Art is therapy, it saved his life, and it’s how he says what he can’t hold in his head alone.

That’s the through-line of the conversation. He followed music until it stopped feeding him, then he returned to painting with full force. The work shifts because he stays restless. The imagery changes because he keeps moving. But the reason stays the same. Painting is how he lives.

Learn more about Terry Urban and other artists at Seminal Artist Group.

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