The Hastings Gallery

As much as this site may appear to be a catalogue of art produced by Terry Hastings, it is also a journey through the many roles we play in life. From main character to chorus member, from spotlight to shadow, from the voice on stage to the stagehand dressed in black—never seen, but always essential.

These works explore identity not as a fixed point, but as a lava lamp of life: colorful, fluid, luminous, and never quite settling. Sometimes I’m the lead. Sometimes I’m the echo. I can play the tree. Or perhaps I’m the wind singing across the desert.

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This is not just art.
It’s me.
And also me.

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My work navigates the subtlety and ambiguity of sexuality—not as a declaration, but as a terrain. It’s about the difference between being someone’s friend and being someone’s gay friend. The shift in tone. The unspoken choreography. The way light falls differently when identity is named. Don't think of me as just gay, but on the other hand, how can you not.

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Some pieces speak quite frankly as an adult. Others whisper remembered thoughts from my childhood. But all of them explore how my queerness moves—through space, memory, and perception. This isn’t about binaries. It’s about layers. Presence and absence.
Me, and also me.

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Terry Hastings is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans digital collage, minimal abstraction, and photography that transforms realism into quiet myth. Rooted in desert light and regional memory, his practice explores how place, gesture, and composition can evoke not just what was seen—but what was remembered, rehearsed, or imagined.

Whether through the restrained geometry of his Postcards series or the elemental choreography of Four Elements, Hastings builds visual narratives that invite viewers into a world both familiar and fictional. Even the most realistic images carry a sense of staging—each one a scene, a signal, a story in motion.

This is art as narrative architecture. Photography as performance. And Palm Springs as you’ve never quite seen it—though it may feel strangely like home.

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Digital Art

This Is Digital Art as Dramaturgy
Terry Hastings holds a degree in theatre—and he will never let you forget it. His digital compositions are modular, mythic, and emotionally precise. Each series is a scene. Each image, a gesture. This is where color, memory, and fictional terrain take center stage—and where queerness is sometimes coded, sometimes loud, and sometimes deliberately missing.

Minimalism is his method of clarity. Not reduction, but precision. Hastings strips each composition to its essentials so the message lands quickly, emotionally, and without distraction. Sometimes the figure disappears. Sometimes the gayness is disguised. Sometimes it’s the absence that speaks loudest. It’s storytelling by subtraction: no clutter, just resonance. And sometimes, just enough ambiguity to pass in polite company.

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​Photography

Movement, Mood, and the Staged Realism of Self
Terry Hastings’ photographic journey began in 2002 with a digital camera and a clothing store. By 2009, he had relocated to Palm Springs, trading studio lights for the desert’s natural glow and a clothing-optional apartment complex full of inspiration. What began as documentation quickly evolved into a practice of visual storytelling—where even realism is staged, and every image is a negotiation between presence, performance, and desire.

His work unfolds in thematic series—most notably The Four Elements and Photocollage—each exploring transformation, perspective, and the choreography of light. Bodies appear and disappear. Identity is revealed, refracted, or withheld. Whether capturing a fleeting gesture or composing a mythic tableau, Hastings uses the camera not just to see, but to stage the self—queer, composed, and always in motion.

• The Four Elements: A meditation on becoming, told through Wind, Water, Fire, and Earth.

  • Wind activates motion and possibility—shot among Palm Springs turbines, it captures breath before action.

  • Water distorts and reflects—emotion dissolving form in fluid dreamscapes.

  • Fire reveals—illuminating truth, carving clarity from shadow.

  • Earth returns—grounded, textured, and surrendered to memory.

Together, these works are not just portraits of nature—they’re stages in the human cycle of transformation. Movement becomes ritual. Fabric becomes story. Nature becomes mirror.

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Conversations

Behind the Image, Beneath the Surface

Terry Hastings’ work doesn’t end at the edge of the frame—it begins there. Conversations is where the deeper layers unfold: essays, interviews, and character-driven vignettes that explore the themes, voices, and processes behind the art. From fictional docents to real collaborators, this is the canon in dialogue—always expanding, always inviting.

Whether you’re curious about the emotional architecture of Midwest Memories, the chromatic logic of Chromatica, or the choreography behind The Four Elements, this section offers a backstage pass to the ideas that shape the work.

Collecting Terry Hastings

Art That Performs, Resonates, and Remembers

To collect a work by Terry Hastings is to bring home more than an image—it’s to acquire a scene, a story, a moment in motion. Each piece is designed with clarity and adaptability, making it equally at home in galleries, boutique spaces, or private collections.

Collectors often describe the work as quietly theatrical—minimal yet emotionally rich, abstract yet deeply familiar. Whether you’re drawn to the tonal precision of Chromatica, the narrative depth of Photocollage, or the elemental power of The Four Elements, you’re not just collecting art. You’re joining the canon.

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