Terri McKnight Sanders

Texas Photographer, Printmaker, Painter, and Mixed Media Artist

Terri McKnight Sanders earned an MFA in Studio Art: Printmaking and Painting from Houston Christian University in 2023, M.ED in Curriculum & Instruction with a minor in Administration in 2009 from Sam Houston State University, Texas Teaching Certificate Pre K-12 Art in 2005. Sanders earned a BFA in Advertising & Graphic Design with a minor in English in 2004 from Sam Houston State University.


Sanders teaches at Houston Christian University as an adjunct professor in Studio Art - Printmaking. Prior teaching includes 22 years of teaching for the Conroe Independent School District. Where she taught high school art in drawing, painting, and created cross-curriculum with academic and art classes. Community outreach has always been a part of her teaching, as well as in her personal life.

As an artist, Sanders is driven to explore new techniques and processes. She enjoys the challenge it gives her to incorporate ideas in layering paint, printmaking, and mixed media. Through her love for photography, Sanders began to explore a new challenge by hand coloring her black and white and infrared photos which resulted in the creation of  “Photopainting”. As a printmaker, she combines printmaking processes and photography into her risograph prints. Creating Altered books allows her to record memories, notes, and creative ideas that may be used in work.

In 2009, Sanders traveled to Mali, West Africa and worked with woodcarvers, silversmiths, and the students at the Institute National Des Arts in Bamako. Her research, Journals, and 150 photographs were selected by the Agricultural Department in Washington DC.

In 2011, a residency at Skidmore College in New York changed the way she approached color theory. Sanders experimented and painted with gouache and watercolor into a series of infrared photographs taken in a cemetery in Puebla, Mexico. The dramatic light of the infrared photography is enhanced with the beauty of the opaque, layered colours of gouache. 

Through continued intense studies, research, and exploration, Sanders expanded her photography by combining 35mm and digital images with painting, printmaking, different papers, mediums, collage, writing, and drawing,  Her photography from Mexico, Africa, and across the U.S. allows her to relive captured memories. She continues her education with classes, workshops, and residencies. During research and the creative process, new areas of interest arise and lead to the next body of work.

Sanders is a member of the Conroe Art League, Lone Star Art Guild, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Printing Museum Houston, and Contemporary Collage Magazine.

Throughout her career as an artist, she has exhibited her artwork in numerous solo and group exhibitions – competitive and invitational - national and international.


terrisanders[email protected] 

@terridsanders