Tim Timmerman's Blog

a photo of Corey Beals and his son Jonathan when we were traveling along the southern Oregon coast

My dear friend and brother Corey Beals gave a chapel talk with that title at George Fox last Monday.  Corey teaches Philosophy and Religious studies here at Fox and is a scholar of Wendell Berry and the philosopher Levinas.

Thought you may want to give it a listen-  He’s a pretty smart guy if you ask me, and not too bad talking to a auditorium of about 1,000 students.

Here’s the link: http://www.georgefox.edu/offices/spirituallife/podcast.html

Click on the “Chapel page on iTunesU.” link- He spoke on 9-21-09

Dog and Game, Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin French, 1699-1779 Oil on canvas 75-3/4 x 54-3/4 in.

I have yet another recent ink, watercolor and gouache to share with you.

This one has a funny story; well I think it’s funny in retrospect here….  You may recall my comment in my September 8th post, that I’m completing these works that I had began back in 2005.  In that summer I attended a conference in Los Angeles.  While there I visited the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena with Doug Campbell a colleague of mine here at Fox.  By the way you can’t miss this museum if you are in L.A! (http://www.nortonsimon.org/)

While there, I sat in front of several paintings and drew some elements from various works; like a dog from the work “Dog And Game” painted in 1730 by the French “Rococo” painter:  Chardin (there is another great dog he painted harassing a parrot in a work  in Louvre; and art history students of mine, remember I call him “Rococo” with reservations, he wasn’t one to paint naked ladies frolicking).

I was in Los Angeles primarily to attend a conference.  One particular lecture got my goat.  Specifically I had a lot of judgments about the speaker.  So while he prattled on I drew more imagery on the work that I had begun with Chardin’s dog.  I wasn’t taking notes from his lecture; I was streaming my mean spirited projections, and even drew a little speaker with a large head looming over him watching and critiquing his every move.

Sorry, It Was Really Envy; Tim Timmerman, ink, watercolor, and gouache, 6 1/2”x8”, summer/05 & 9/09

Now looking at the work I had to chuckle.  In retrospect I know in reality my judgments were all about me.  I was jealous of the guy really, his status his place in life his looks, he seemed so put together, “the ideal Christian man.”  I met him officially about a year and a half ago and I realized he was just a good ordinary guy trying to live life the best he could too.  What was I thinking?

So to redeem the piece I had begun, I painted a plein air landscape of Klameth Falls over the whole thing (see my first blog entry), and ended up painting in gouache “humbled” little heads, looking sad and apologetic.

So mister speaker – sorry I thought you were a dork.  It was about me.

Tim

Henri Nouwen

Read a little bit of Henri Nouwen this morning and thought I’d share some of what I read with you.  I am always moved by this man’s honesty and depth.  He wrestled with his angels and loved many.

Here’s the quote:

“Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment.  There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments in our life.  It seems that there is no such thing as clear-cut pure joy but that, even in the most happy moments of our existence, we sense a tinge of sadness.  In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of its limitations.  In every success, there is the fear of jealousy.  Behind every smile, there is a tear.  In every embrace, there is loneliness.  In every friendship, distance  And in all forms of light, there is knowledge of surrounding darkness.”  Henri Nouwen from Out of Solitude

I guess I have been resonating with the dicodomies of life as of late, so found this ringing true in my heart this morning.

Take care.

Well, thought I’d share with you another one of the ink gouache and watercolor pieces that I’ve completed as of late.  Hope you are having a good evening (well, or morning, afternoon etc…).

"Both, And"; Tim Timmerman, ink, watercolor, and gouache, 8”x8”, summer/05 & 9/09

So working on the frames for all these monoprints and mixed media pieces and I decided to endeavor to get wood that has already has had a life as something else.  I will admit I wandered the isles of Home Depot and Lowes first, finally coming to the conclusion, “What I am doing?  I’m an assemblage artist!?”

Ah wood is our friend, kinda...

In Portland we have a very wonderful place called the ReBuilding Center that is full of all kinds of parts of homes that have been disassembled (http://www.rebuildingcenter.org/).  I had an adventure digging through their trim and filled my Scion (the little toaster that could) full of wood. Since then, I have spent the last couple of days cutting up that wood into workable pieces for eleven frames.

Now, one important lesson I learned: Do not have a 9-foot piece of wood rest against your front window….  I got home, and happily moved the wood out of the vehicle.  Later when getting back into the car, I remarked, “Well, lookie there my window is broken…” You would think by this age I would have figured the dynamics of spatial relationships but I guess I still had this lesson to learn.  So my advice to you:  Don’t rest long things against your front window.  It’s dumb.

Many thanks to my insurance company and Dean in his mobile vehicle who replaced my window this afternoon.

Frames in process (yea, you wanted a photo of a broken window, I know...)

I was delighted at how much money I saved buying recycled lumber at the ReBuild it center, but this kind of took the wind out of my sails a bit.

Ah – the price of creating art….

All right, nothing more to see here… go make something.

Dibujo de un árbol (Drawing a Tree) by Leonardo da Vinci

I Saw an exhibit several months back on the Renaissance painter Leonardo daVinci; here were some of my favorite quotes I found of his:

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them.  They went out and happened to things.”

“One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.”

“There are three classes of people:  Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.”

Hope your day is going well here….

Tim

"Interdependece" Tim Timmerman, Monotype; 10"x23 12"

When I was about seven, I received a toy my parent’s gave me that they had gotten in their travels to Ireland.  It was a wooden stacking head of a man with blue eyes and a yellow pipe.  The brim of his hat was a palette and in the top of the hat he carried a paintbrush.  I loved it, and used it again and again till it began falling to pieces.

As an artist about fourteen years ago I ran onto that toy, and ended up using an image of what was left of the Irish wooden-head in a mixed media painting.  The top part of his hat that had fallen off I decided to use that part as the head of an all-together different figure that I was building from miscellaneous discards.  I would use that second figure in a large watercolor.

About a month ago I ran onto both of these figures in a cupboard and put them physically back together, placing the part of the hat (that was now the head of the one figure) back on top of the head of the original Irish toy. Viola!  I had found a whole new content to the figures that resonated with the theme of brotherhood that much of the work is tackling as of late.

So, when cranking out monotypes at the Atelier Meridian a couple of weeks ago, I decide to use them as the central figures of one the prints.  When I returned home to finish the eight ink and watercolor pieces I found the two joined figures would work perfectly in the structure and content of one of those works as well, and so there, I rendered them in gouache. You will also notice that I used the Irish figure as a singular unit in the work, “Community Has Its Perils” from an earlier post.

"Individuation & Interdependence" Tim Timmerman; ink, watercolor, gouache; 6"x10"

The titles of the works here you can find in a quote found on this blog as well.  There is something very rewarding when the muse is working…  It’s all connected indeed.

Blessings-

J.D. Perkin; Little Boxer, 2009, ceramic, 46" x 17" x 16"

An artist friend of mine, J.D. Perkin in September has work up at the Laura Russo Gallery in Portland.  His current set of ceramic figures are these delightful “boxers” some of which remind me of thoughtful toys or the old “Rock-em-Sock-em” game.

J.D., a very skilled sculptor, has a very interesting technique of creating his initial figures in parts, making molds of those originals, and then pressing clay into the mold and manipulating the sculpture from there as he assembles them.

The result is a very unified show of these hollow often quite large ceramic figures, that have a delightful sense of variety, humor and intrigue. I especially enjoy how he manipulates  and marks their surfaces.

Check out the show if you are in the Portland area before it closes at the end of the month.

Another item I found very encouraging was when I went to the opening the other artist exhibiting with him, Sherrie Wolf has a large number of her still-lifes that had already been snatched up with prices of $2,500 and above.  I found it hopeful that folks are buying art, and see beauty as something worth paying for.  (Check out both of their works at:  http://www.laurarusso.com/exhibits/index.html )

Sherrie Wolf; Rose in a Glass and Dahlias Ref: Melchior d’Hondecoeter, 1636-1695, 2009, oil on linen, 36" x 36"

"Keeping a Boundary" Tim Timmerman; Kiln Worked Glass

Just read this a few days ago and found myself resonating with this remark of Peck’s.  Thought you might find it of use as well:

“We are called to wholeness and simultaneously to recognize our incompleteness; called to power and to acknowledge our weakness; called to both individuation and interdependence.”

F. Scott Peck; Different Drum;  Page 56

(It’s being in the tension of those poles that seems to be an element that makes us human, and how we negotiate those opposites makes us adults.  Not an easy endeavor indeed!)

Working on "Community Has It's Perils" in the studio.

In the summer of 2005 I was at the tail end of doing a series of ink and watercolor pieces that I had been creating for two years.  To begin these, as I traveled about in my bag I would always have several sheets of heavy watercolor paper. When something struck my fancy, or as I was waiting in the dental office I would work on them, be it home, in airports, museums or cafes.  In the fall of 2005 I moved onto other things leaving twelve pieces unfinished.  My methodology in creating these had been to work spontaneously, similar to how I create images in my sketchbook, where a drawing that that I had created from a concept in a lecture ended up being combined with a figure I liked from a piece I saw in a museum, etc…  Since I typically am very planned out with what I create, I liked the spontaneity of assembling these images and their ideas.

What has been interesting in launching into completing these now,  is I am now approaching half-baked ideas four years later.  Since much of my work is about observations at the time, I’m finding it curious to reflect on my viewpoint then, in contrast often to my viewpoint now.  Technically, I have in addition discovered that I really enjoy working in gouache on the original watercolor and ink pen works (similar to what I did for a series years ago called “Paradigm Shift”) . The transparency of the watercolor is illuminated nicely in contrast to the sharpness and flat elements that gouache can provide.

A case in point of how my perspective changed:  The work below “Community Has Its Perils” came about initially by being the drawing of the saint like figure on the left with birds, the pattern on the right, the gate in the lower  right corner, and the photos of “named” stars.  I drew the image in the summer of 05 in a cafe in Pittsburgh after leading an intense men’s experiential weekend in Michigan.  I was feeling quite optimistic about the idea of “community” at the time.  But- four years later, I know now that  community takes a heck of a lot of work, and with the benefit of time, I’m struck that a number of the individuals that were so hip on the idea of “brotherhood” have gone their own way.

"Community Has Its Perils," Tim Timmerman; watercolor, ink, gouache on paper, 8"x8"

So with my new perspective, I changed the coloring to be a more sober one (adding in the sap green, and deepening the brown), and added the bees and wood figure in gouache.  The bees are a traditional symbol of the monastic community, but in painting them in glow-in-the dark colors they come across in my assessment more menacing than comforting.  The wooden character was added as the observer in, and of it all. He’s still in it for the long haul, despite the work that it involves.

Blessings to you-  Tim