Timothy J. King
Stages of Possession and Transcendence: A painters renewed acquaintance to life.
For me painting is a form of meditation. It is a search for the soul encrusted in layers of paint. With each layer a dream of the artistic vision transcends to the next level of possession. What is possessed is not the object or reality in front of the painter. What is possessed is that sense of being among the blocks of tone and color and line. These marks and expressions revoke the first rational experience of seeing in favor of a newer and fresher order of vision. This painting provokes a sense of reality that can be witnessed but never held.
I find painting goes beyond the notion that painted reality is “nothing but “ a precursor to a photographic realism. Painting is a phenomenological experiment. There is a synthesis between the visual and the kinesthetic that forms a powerful third range of human perception. Space and form are not purely optical manifestations. The sense of mass and line provoke a muscle sense, a physicalness between viewer and the painted relationships. Hans Hoffman spoke of “Push-Pull”. Matisse referred to the convexity of pictorial space. Both painters are expressing the importance of more than a photo vision in painting but rather a parallax that only the painter can grasp. In this “third-eye” or “minds-eye” the painter is not free from the experience of perspective and local color and the naturalistic geometry of the objects and scenes. Rather, the painter is liberated with reality and the defining aspects encompassing these and other less obvious paths to vision, sensing and feeling . The intuited convexity and physicality steer from a photo centric world experience toward a kinesthesia sense of parallax where sensing motion, weight and position is integral to internal feelings about external perceptions.
When a painter reaches a stage that things are represented as feelings and sensations of mass and gravity the holistic nature of the mind surges forward into a world of inspirations. Transcendences forms between objects, scenes and internalized physicality melt into the emotional, poetic and expressive meanings of experience. This is the high level of possessing that I work toward.
There is a Melding in the minds-eye between physicality and the transfixing emotions. It is in this level of painting that the subject and predicate evolve to create a story telling metaphorical poetic mechanism. In a landscape free of a text to follow the painters tells the story of perceptions and emotions. The content is richer than painting from a text because vision is the true source of a painter’s primal motivation. The idea is ancient and modern at once because it is a definition of painting that transcends the barriers of historical precedent. While the history painters were heralded as the ideal high form of painting, the genre, landscape and still life painters were breaking all the barriers forming the forward momentum of art. Our greatest painters were not lost in the historical texts but were creating a vision of experience that transcended the past. While the art market dictated the superstars of their day, the visionary painting came from below the fashion.
My work connects to past great traditions of painting while satisfying my urgent sense of modernity, my love of natural forms and my aesthetic joy in perception. All my work represents an intimacy and pathos that moves me away from directions pushed by the contemporary art society and the urban industrial society. Contrary to the move away from nature they advocate, my landscapes are motivated by the desperation of searching for both the sublime artistic preservation of painting’s past and a hint of salvation within today’s "green" environmentalism movement. Somehow I see the two struggles in parallel dimensions. I share the passions of Corot and Constable for nature and art. But I see nature in a new light. I view art and nature from our new ecological consciousness.
In addition to landscape, when I paint the heroic monumentality of the figure it becomes a symbol of human nature with the best and worst of our intentions veiled within. My still life paintings have intended juxtapositions of the natural and the manufactured to encompass life’s material and cultural joy and tragedy. I work these compositions out of a painterly poetic, building and destroying as I renew my vision, deconstruct my perceptions but without postmodernist overstatements or gimmicks that would mark my work as contemporary to them. Instead, I’m driven by the unpredictability of painting’s visual momentum and emotional crossovers and I strive to find visual and emotional truths as they emerge in the work.
My style comes out of the historical desire to establish structural and poetic spaces as well as the modern need to balance this with how the world feels today. I find that the path to transcending as a painter interweaves with abstraction and narrative but finally arrives at mental holism, emotional meaning and a sense of natural human significance.
Vita
416 North Worth Avenue Elgin, IL 60123. Home 847-931-7881, Cell 847-791-1196, Fax 847-931-7812
Email: t_king_design@hotmail.com Web: midwest-paint-group.org / absolutearts.com/portfolios/t/timking
MFA-Master of Fine Arts– Painting & Drawing–2006, Northern Illinois University
MA-Master of Arts– Painting 1985, The University of Tulsa
BFA-Bachelor of Fine Arts– Painting 1981, Kansas City Art Institute
Foundations Studies– 1975-1976, Columbus College of Art & Design
T e a c h i n g (4 years of experience)
Illinois Institute of Art, Schaumburg. 2006 - current — Instructor of Art
Fundamentals of Color, Package Design, Print Production, Fundamentals of Design
(14 classes in 2.25 years)
Loyola University Chicago. 2006 - 2008—Instructor of Art
Painting I, Drawing I, Fundamentals of Design (8 classes in 2 years)
Northern Illinois University. 2004 - 2007— Visiting Assistant Professor of Art
Drawing I, Drawing II, Fundamentals of Design (8 classes over 3 years)
Henderson State University, Arkedelphia, AR. 1990 - 1991— Instructor of Art
Designing with Type, Computer Based Graphic Design (2 classes over I year)
The University of Tulsa. 1982 - 1934— Instructor of Record, Drawing I. (1 class, 1 semester)
Teaching Assistant in Painting I, Serigraphy I, Alexander Hogue Gallery Coordinator
(3 TA units over 3 semesters)
Visiting Artist, Senior Project Critique Panel, March 15, 2006— Knox College, Galesburg, IL
Drawing & Studio Art Program Evaluator, Summer 2007 Wright State University, Dayton, OH
Visiting Artist Lecture, LaGrange Art League, March 14, 2008, LaGrange, IL
Since 2007— Kate Hendrickson Gallery, Chicago, IL
A r t i s t O r g a n i z a t i o n
2001-Current— Co-creator, Organizer, facilitator, Website Director/Author
The Midwest Paint Group (MPG) has 10 full members with 10 associate members. The organization develops exhibits for its members at various galleries, colleges and museums across the Midwest. MPG operates a website gallery and virtual studio website with fequent guest artist shows and news. Midwest-paint-group.org
U p c o m i n g E x h i b i t i o n s
Works from Perception: Paintings from The Midwest Paint Group.
Winter 2009—Swope Museum of Art. Terre haute, IN
Fall 2009— Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art . St. Joseph, MO
Winter 2010— George A. Spiva Center for the Arts. Joplin, MO
2010—An exhibition of New York painters and the Midwest Paint Group. Westbeth Gallery, NYC.
2011—Midwest Paint Group, Wright State University Gallery.
2008— Timothy King: Works on Paper. Kate Hendrickson Gallery, (Solo) Chicago IL
2008— Timothy King: Landscape Paintings and Pastels. Gallery Thomas Tomc (Solo) Chicago IL
2007— Walter King and Timothy King, Works on Paper. Maria Elena Kravetz Galeria de Arte.
Cordoba, Argentina
2006— Prairie Spaces: encroached and reclaimed. Solo Invitational, Bowery Gallery, New York, N
2006— Elgin Spaces: works done from the vicinity. (Solo) Elgin Grant exhibit, Gail Borden Library, Elgin, IL
2006— Suspended Emotion: Solo MFA Exhibition. Gallery 214, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL
2005— Post Abstract Figuration: Paintings of the Midwest Paint Group. Curator & Exhibitor.
(6-person exhibit) Zhou B. Center, 33 Collective Gallery. Chicago, IL
2005— Timothy King and Walter King, Observed and Staged: Metaphorical Terrains,
Zhou B. Center, 33 Collective Gallery. Chicago, IL
2005— Life Whispers, Three Illinois Painters, Glass Gallery, Northern Illinois University.
2002—,Midwest Paint group, (6-person exhibit) UPLEFT Gallery, Terre Haute, IN
1990—Timothy John King & Walter Clemens King. Paintings, 734 Gallery, Columbus, OH
1985— Master of Arts Solo Thesis Exhibition,. Alexander Hogue Gallery, University of Tulsa, OK
1980— KCAI Senior Solo Exhibition. Kemper Gallery, Kansas City, MO
2008— Jed Perl National Competition: Bowery Gallery, NYC
2008— Pride of Place: The Midwest Paint Group. (water conservation exhibition) Ryerson
Conservation Preserve. Northbrook, IL
2007— New Works by the Midwest Paint Group. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Gallery
Terre Haute, IN
2006— Illinois Institute of Art Faculty Annual. Ruth Ray Memorial Gallery, Schaumburg, IL
2006— Annual Faculty Exhibition, Gallery 214, Northern Illinois University. DeKalb, IL
2006— Loyola University Chicago Studio Art Faculty Biennale. LUMA, Loyola Univ. Museum of Art
2006— Annual MFA (group) Exhibition. NIU Art Museum Gallery, Chicago, IL
2006, 2005, 2004—Graduate Group Exhibition, Jack Olsen Memorial Gallery, Northern Illinois Univ.
2004— Drawing From Perception (National). Wright State University Art Galleries, Dayton, OH
2003— Spotlight on the Arts, Campbell House Gallery. Geneva, IL
1993— Anonymous. Group show, Barth Gallery Columbus, OH
1991— Yearly Retrospective, Columbus Music Hall. 734 Gallery Columbus, OH
1987— Thirtieth Annual Delta Art Exhibition, The Arkansas Art Center Museum, Little Rock, AR
1986— 20 Years of Helen. Alexander Hogue Gallery, The University of Tulsa. OK
1984—Westby Center Group Exhibition. Choteau Gallery, The University of Tulsa. OK
1984— Fields Gallery, (Collection Purchase) Tulsa, OK
1982, 83, 84—Annual Herbert Gussman. Alexander Hogue Gallery, The University of Tulsa. OK.
1979— Sixth Annual Midwestern Print & Drawing Competition. Philbrook Art Center Museum Tulsa, OK
Standing Fast at the Bowery Gallery by ALIX FINKELSTEIN | July 29, New York Sun 29, 2008
Gabriel Laderman on Art, <gabrielladerman.vox.com> (Midwest Paint Group review inserted in:
Richard Lapresti II, Nov. 14, 2006)
Gabriel Laderman. An Exhibition of Mid Western Post Abstract Art. Exhibition catalog: Post-Abstract Figuration, Paintings of the Midwest Paint Group. Dec. 2, 2005. 33 Collective Gallery, Zhou B Center, Chicago, IL
Crossroads of artists: Summer Artswalk will feature work of some of Midwest's top creative talents.
Steve Kash/Special to the Tribune-Star, June 21, 2002
P u b l i s h e d W o r k
Timothy King MFA Documentation: Suspended Emotion.
Northern Illinois University, School of Art, The Graduate School, 2006
Timothy King MA Thesis: Space and Form of the Binocular Image: A Study of Disparate Image Fusion. The University of Tulsa, The Graduate School, 1985
2006— The Elgin Cultural Arts Commission. Artist Grant. Elgin, IL
1986— Helena Rubinstein Award, Parsons School of Design. New York, NY
1982— The Art Program Special Recognition in Painting, The University of Tulsa. OK
1980— First Place Portfolio, Peter T. Bohan Drawing Competition, Kansas City Art Institute. MO
1975-1976— Freshman portfolio Scholarship & Ford Foundation Scholarship.
Columbus College of Art & Design, OH