Artsellers.com

Howard Terpning

Howard Terpning was born November 5, 1927, in Oak Park, Illinois. In 1945, at age seventeen, Terpning joined the Marine Corps and served as an infantryman in China. Afterward, he found educational institutions heavily enrolled with returned war veterans. He was told he would have to wait in line to enter the Chicago Academy of Fine Art. His father's friend and neighbor, illustrator Harold Mundstock, interceded with the academy. Later Terpning attended the American Academy of Fine Art.

In the summer of 1974, at age forty-seven, he took a couple of months off from his commercial work and finished three easel paintings on speculation and hope. The feeling of freedom, of painting what he wanted instead of commissioned pieces, work done to order, made that summer one of the most satisfying of his life as an artist. He sent the canvases to Troy's Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, which sold them in January 1975. That was a turning point. Gradually he reduced his commercial accounts, accepting fewer assignments. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, and educated at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and the American Academy of Art, Terpning went the apprentice route to work his way to New York and commercial illustration. Having built a successful career in advertising illustration, he gave it up in 1976 and moved to Tucson to become a western painter, and in just a few years he won the respect and admiration of his peers, and a vast following for his works. In 1976, he walked away from a successful illustration career to pursue his dream of chronicling the Native American people. Within two short years he became one of the giants in his field.