“Artist Not Interested In Realism”
Martin Timko is not interested in realism.
The Ohio-born artist has said it before, and most certainly will repeat the phrase a number of times before he’s gone.
Timko’s slant is the world viewed from an abstract perspective. He’s into landscapes, nature and light, only not as they appear to the naked eye.
Timko has 33 works on display in his exhibit “New Paintings” at the Garret Gallery, third floor, Fairfield County District Library. He will be showing and selling his pieces there until Feb. 7. His works range in size from 5 feet by 5 feet to 8 inches by 8 inches. While the size varies greatly, the content does not.
“Most of my paintings are either landscapes or scenes of nature which are isolated in perspective,” Timko said. “I try to express with color and other cues what I see, as well as what I don’t see. That is, not only the view, but also the obscure layers below the surface or beyond the clouds.”
Timko was born and raised in Rayland, Ohio and spent the majority of his youth reading, hiking, and collecting rocks. He started out with a love of photography, buying his first 35mm camera as a teenager. He was influenced by the colorful and abstract photos of Eliot Porter and later by the dream-like photo-essays of Duane Michals.
Timko’s mother was a painter. He said her portraits, landscapes, and still-life, covered the walls of their home. He shunned the formal artistic experience – he took just one art class in high school and later earned a degree in mental health from Ohio State University.
“As an artist, my ultimate reference point is the New York School of Abstract Expressionism that dominated the art world of the 1940’s to 1960’s,” Timko said. “This was the art I was seeing as a child in the museums my parents took me to. It was what I imagined art to be.”
The abstract thought is unquestionably the dominant influence in Timko’s work. His earthy-colored works are filled with non-traditional perspectives and off-center views. He said his biggest influences are Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Robert Motherwell.
Timko maintains a residence in Columbus, but the majority of his work is centered at the Jadite Gallery in New York City. He has done shows in Los Angeles, LaGrange Georgia, Columbus and Ada, Ohio.
Despite the wide travel, he feels the Ohio Valley upbringing is a major influence on his approach. “The particular landscape and industrialization of Eastern Ohio have molded my ideas of landscape painting. The color of the river, sky, and landscapes are different there. I’m descendant from a long line of coal-miners and mill-workers. So, I must see nature differently.”
Timko has just recently started doing the larger works. His 1991 New York show, “The Forgotten View,” was basically a group of landscape and nature paintings done in a large scale, more realistic media.
His 1992 installment, “Recent Paintings,” also in New York, contained several dark, nocturnal works. He attributes the change to moving to a more spacious studio in the middle of downtown Columbus. “When I got the new studio, I started working exclusively at night,” he said. “I had all the extra space and it was so quiet and isolated, the subsequent paintings became larger, darker, and more intuitive.”
The artist hopes he has come full circle with his Lancaster exhibit. He wants to combine the post-Abstract Expressionism with his own thoughts. “My challenge is to keep the spirit of the movement alive in my work, without submerging my own.”
-Chris McIntosh, The Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, Lancaster, Ohio.
Above photo: “photo of artist in front of "Along The Beach" |
