Meet Teri Mctighe

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Teri Mctighe. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Teri below.

Hi Teri, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

Growing up on a ranch, and being the child of parents who were also raised on ranches, work ethic runs deep in my family and background. Both of my parents come from homesteader families, people who immigrated to the US looking for opportunities they didn’t have at home. They had to figure out how to either make a living, or give up the opportunities they had been granted. My family has survived economic collapses such as the Great Depression, long droughts, historic blizzards, and managed to survive despite these obstacles. Improvisation and learning to do without were part of their survival. That spirit of overcoming has inspired me my entire life. I too have faced hardships that tested my resolve. When it seems that the odds are stacked against me, and I am fully overwhelmed by circumstances, the core of perseverance I saw in my parents keeps me going. I use this in both of my careers, both with running the family ranch and my art career. There are times when we are facing an imminent blizzard, or I have invested a great deal of work, money, and time into a show that has been unsuccessful, but I learned to look ahead. I tell people that gambling has no interest for me because I gamble every day of my life! Experience has taught me that there will be wins and there will be losses, but whatever is currently happening is not permanent. There will be another chance, conditions will improve, you “take your lumps” as the saying goes and do what you can with what you have. That is a hallmark of people who survived homesteading times, financial and environmental and physical tests of their mettle, and managed to keep a family operation together. I don’t quit until the job is done, even if I feel like it’s too much, and cultivating that ability to push through has proven to me many times that my fears are worse than reality when the current challenge has been overcome. I look at all the advantages I have today that were not available to my ancestors, and it gives me the perspective that whatever seems insurmountable to me is not as difficult as it would have been for them.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I am fully self-employed, which means for me that my workday is never over. I am always thinking ahead: planning for what the cattle need next, or what applications to fill out for art shows, trying to make contingency plans for extreme or unforeseen events. When the weight of two businesses is perpetually on one’s shoulders, separating a work life from a personal life becomes impossible. Most of my time is now dedicated to the family cattle ranch I grew up on in western South Dakota, raising the Hereford cows my dad Joe took so much pride in throughout his life. He has since passed, and together my mom Joanne and I keep the family operation going. There is no such thing as a weekend or a day off on a ranch, every day brings its own responsibilities and challenges. Each season has its own responsibilities. It’s a lot for two women, but both my mom and I are proud to be independent, self-sufficient women in a rural ranching community. In some ways, this lifestyle is still a man’s world, but we are fortunate to know many women in our locale who are as driven, hard-working, and in charge as we are! We are proud to carry-on a family legacy when family agriculture or operations are shrinking more each year due to so many challenges, only one of them being financial. Some people might think that ranching is simply watching your cattle eat grass, which I was told once before by someone entirely uninformed about ranch life, but there’s so much one has to know about business, finances, animal behavior and husbandry, responsible conservation practices, and many aspects of hard, physical labor for which one must be prepared and in shape.

I knew however, from a young age that working with horses and cattle on the ranch was not my sole calling. I had an early interest in artwork, wanting to paint and draw and sculpt everything around me from the time I was a very small child. My mom is an artist, and I watched her paint and draw horses and cattle and people we knew. My dad also had artistic talent, and while he never pursued it, he taught me as well! He used to make wire armatures of dinosaurs and take me to one of our stock dams where we would use the fine clay-like silt that rose to the top of drying mud puddles and sculpt dinosaurs. I would do this with Play-Doh as well, and later more professional forms of clay my mom started procuring for me at art supply stores. By the time I was ready to graduate high school, I knew I wanted to go to college for fine art. I attended Black Hills State University in Spearfish, South Dakota and graduated magna cum laude with a double BA in Fine Art and English. Soon after graduation, I began looking for local coffee shops and restaurants in which display my artwork, and through some friends got to know local artists and photographers who were kind enough to give me advice on shows and events to sign up for. I gradually worked my way into the art community and found a family amongst artists I had admired before I began putting my artwork into the public eye.

While I enjoy an eclectic variety of art forms and genres, I have naturally gravitated towards realistic western artwork. Tying back into my ranch life and my position as a female rancher/cowgirl, I have felt the drive to show my life‘s work through my eyes. I work freehand from my own photography, eyeballing my pieces without the use of projection, tracing, or grids. I depict people I know, horses I train and work with and ride, scenes from around our ranch and surrounding ranches, basically whatever speaks to me, inspires me. The prairies of western South Dakota have a subtle yet profound beauty. There’s so much to see and experience and things that, unless you take the time to look at them, may seem insignificant. My artwork tells the story of my life, the continuation of the pioneering spirit I inherited from my predecessors that makes me stubbornly work through the seasons and elements that can make living in this part of the world harsh and unrelenting. I want my viewers to see what I love about this life, and hopefully intern cultivate or further develop a love of this lifestyle and area in them.

I work in a variety of mediums. My first love was graphite pencil, I started getting serious about my work while drawing portraits of The Beatles in little sketchbooks I used to carry around with me all the time. Before them, I would draw horses or favorite TV characters. I felt the need to draw constantly! The need to create is a real urge, an itch that must be scratched. I took art classes in college, doing as much drawing and painting and sculpting as possible. I eventually took a watercolor class in college, and immediately fell in love with that medium. The skill it takes to manipulate and layer watercolors, to achieve the effects one wants was fascinating to me. The washes, the bleeding effects, what can be done with spritzes of water or salt dropped into a wet patch, the challenge of leaving white, are are so much fun! It can be trying, but I have always found it enjoyable despite that. More recently I’ve been inspired to develop more skills with colored pencils. Working on black paper and doing finely detailed pieces that jump off the page has captured my imagination. There is a deep satisfaction in bringing a colored pencil drawing to life, being able to do such fine detail and layer the colors to make pieces that are almost tangible in texture. One other form of artwork I intend to develop more is a combination of sculpture and acrylic painting which I started experimenting with in college, where I use relief and three-dimensional sculpture to create a piece that I then paint so it has the appearance of a painting coming to life and leaping from the canvas. It’s an extension of what I constantly strive to achieve with my artwork: detailed realism with which my viewers can deeply connect.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

One thing I felt that was important with developing into a professional artist was not just being set free to create whatever captures your fancy, but to have real skills in traditional forms of art. Knowing the old masters, studying ancient and renaissance artwork, understanding and trying these techniques, gives a solid foundation from which to leap into experimenting. I think it’s important we don’t forget our history and everything achieved before us in favor of only doing some thing different.

Another challenge I’ve had to overcome is how easy it is to be discouraged. To look around you and compare yourself to others, thinking that whatever you’re doing is not good enough, is not on the same level as others you admire. I’ve often heard the saying that the artist is their own harshest critic. And I think that’s true of artwork, but other areas of our lives as well. We do tend to criticize ourselves most harshly, or fall into habits of assuming that others are constantly judging us on our flaws and think the worst of what we believe about ourselves. We can let ourselves believe that our most negative, toxic thoughts are what others see in us. But if you were able to ask someone what they thought of you and your work, and you could receive a completely honest and unfiltered answer, most people would probably be surprised by how positive the feedback would be.

Falling into self-destructive thought patterns is a terrible habit. Finding ways of escaping that running in circles in our own heads is a really important part of continuing to move forward with your life and your career. For me, that’s where having both my artwork and the ranch help to balance one another. When things get overwhelming on the ranch, it has been calming for me to switch gears and be able to work on a piece of artwork in the evening when the day’s ranch work is done. Or vice versa – if I’m feeling pessimistic about my artwork, that my visions are not materializing the way I want them to, or I feel my fellow artists are more skilled and accomplished and productive and successful than I am, it helps to get out into the wide open in the fresh air, to spend time with my dogs and my horses, and just change my train of thought. The connection I feel to the animals we are surrounded by in our daily lives out here is honestly quite therapeutic. Finding a balance and a way of changing gears has been critical.

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?

Both of my parents had a profound impact on who I am today and what my careers are. With both of them being artistic, so understanding of my drive to create, and also invested in the rural ranching life, their sympathy and dedication truly inspired me. But more than that, both of my parents encouraged me. My mom and my dad recognized the passion I had for artwork, and they believed in my abilities. They encouraged me to create pieces, they gave feedback on my creations, they provided supplies while I was growing up and opportunities, they gave me the freedom to create artwork when I was at home and to take art classes when I was in school. After college, even though I lived and worked on the ranch at the beginning of my career, as I still do, my parents made allowances for me so that I could have the time I needed to take my artwork to shows and would work the ranch schedule around those shows as much as possible. My parents picked up the slack on the ranch when I had to be gone. That kind of cooperation and encouragement, working together to make sure necessary tasks were still accomplished but allowing for my other career to blossom, made all the difference. Had I not had that early support and continuing confidence in my ability to achieve and be successful, I can’t say whether I would have continue to pursue my art career or not. Having people who believe in you and provide consistent encouragement (parents of otherwise) is a huge boon for anyone, regardless of career.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.artoutofnowhere.com
• Instagram: teri_mctighe_artist
• Facebook: Teri McTighe – Out of Nowhere, Fine Art