Naturalist abstract painter
After a lifetime of engagement with art, particularly weaving and photography, Terri Riendeau began painting in 2017. She had suffered a severe concussion and could neither comfortably read nor look at anything on a screen. Painting was a quiet, analog activity that quickly became an important part of her path to healing. In early 2020, she retired from Princeton’s Office of Admission, where she had been senior associate dean, thinking she would finally have the freedom to make frequent trips into New York City to see art. When the pandemic shut down that avenue, she pivoted to a life very familiar from her childhood: spending hours walking in the woods and along the tidal marshes of Barnegat Bay. Increasingly, her paintings arise from the time she spends with New Jersey’s native plants and birds.