Terry Plater is a painter who makes her home in Ithaca, New York. Her work has been described as "contemporary art for the classic art lover." A colorist by nature, she values equally the craft, the history, the traditions, and the processes of painting. Taken together, her figures and landscapes present an intellectual and emotional record of her responses to people and places she has encountered.

Plater works primarily in oils or pastels in sizes ranging from four-by-six inches to four-by-six feet. For the most part self-trained as an artist, she grounds her pieces in a realist tradition. Interpretive paintings and photographs, often based on extensive travel notes and sketches, expose Plater's interest in equity as well as aesthetics and continually demand that the two be reconciled.