Works-in-progress / process, Work for sale

My recent works are the culmination of numerous small moments – looking, remembering, and imagining. If there is a theme to my work, it is listening. That could translate in the visual sense to observing but observing with less bias and less projection onto the things around me – just listening and responding in kind with the intent of entering into conversation with the quieter things around me. There is joy and even reverie in my work; but alongside the pleasures there are the realities of danger, loss, and sobering acknowledgement that what lives, also dies, one feeding off the other.

I find it immensely curious that when I look at a tree, I get no sense of critical judgment, no sense of aesthetics in nature, no conclusions. We humans make endless decisions about what is right or wrong, what looks good, or what we like or don’t like. Yet when I look at that tree, I sense no care for concerns beyond its nature. That tree just is. When I began working on my recent body of work I asked the simple question, what if a painting could capture that same sense of just being, without any reaching after fact or reason. What would it mean to let go of my aesthetic sensibilities and act according to my own nature. The goal becoming just focus on a simple conversation, through the materials, between myself and that drama of those small things all around me.

The materials I use are simple: wood, silk organza, collaged photographs, and gouache paint. I begin by taking photos, moments that I capture as I move about the world. I collage and alter the images, then transfer them onto the silk with acrylic emulsion. These “transfers” are stretched on wood frames that I make – then the painting with gouache begins. The entire process becomes an extended series of translations and layered impressions that culminate in multi-faceted views. I see them as a blend of present observations, memories, and imaginative musings.

But of course, this is all just a game. I don’t know how to judge the success of these inquiries. My only hope is that I have moved a little closer to understanding the nature of things. I’m still in the process of learning, but I hope to see things more clearly as I go, to see things as they are and less about what I think of them.

Tim Cross is a Seattle area artist working in drawing, painting, sculpture and ceramics. He received a B.A. from The Evergreen State College in 1995, and an MFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 2003. Since then, he has been actively making and showing both locally and nationally. He is currently showing with Koplin Del Rio Galley in Seattle.

Tim is also a professor of art at Edmonds College where he works with students to encourage their creative growth. It is a complementary relationship in that it brings fresh conversation and ideas to a flourishing studio practice.

I will be sharing a good number of recent works in different media (painting, drawing, ceramics, wood and mixed media) I will also have works in progress and will be happy to discuss or demonstrate the process I enjoy.

No real issues, there will be plenty of street parking.