Artist Terry Dunlap is investing her creative talent into the lives of seventeen middle school students during a three week course at West Denver Preparatory Charter School. A Morrison local, Dunlap has many years of experience producing strikingly vivid floral paintings, unique acrylics with dots transformed into etherealtrees, and her most recent Taos series. Terry's creativity continuously flows into new works of art, and has overflowed into a desire to ignite a spark of passion for painting into the lives of these youngsters.

"When I was in first grade, I drew a drawing of a robin and a hand. The teacher made such a big thing of it, she held it up in front of the class and said how great it was. I remember nothing of grade school until the fifth grade except for that moment in first grade. If someone lit a fire inside of me, it was that teacher doing that one thing to me," Terry recalls. "I am just trying to give another spark to their eager little minds, and who knows where it will go from there."

...and it could go as far as it has for Terry Dunlap. Her paintings are displayed in galleries in Littleton, Colorado, all the way to Dublin, Ireland.

Co-teaching with her daughter, Jennifer Dunlap, a special education teacher at West Denver Prep, the two have combined efforts to introduce these economically disadvantaged students to a world of art that they may not have the opportunity to experience otherwise. Beginning with a lesson on taking care of acrylic paints and brushes, the students then used pictures from magazines to design what they wanted to paint on their own canvas. "They are by far the most interested kids I have worked with thus far. The only ones there are the ones who want to be there and they really work for the chance."

"If I can light a fire inside a few of these kids, then I have done my job," states Dunlap.