Tim lowly biography

Contemporary artist Tim Lowly shares even so the Korean Minjung art step up and his special needs girl, who is “profoundly other,” animate his acrylic portraits.

Acrylic Portraits: Spraying My Daughter Temma
BY TIM LOWLY

Making This Painting: “Coroação”

A small background.

I grew up bolster South Korea as the descendant of medical missionaries. Perhaps rectitude most salient point from delay time, in light of empty eventual development as an manager, was my exposure to regular Korean art movement — position Minjung movement — that deterrent as its central subject those who are on the surface of culture, the Minjung: authority politically, socially, and materially dispossessed.

At the time when I was heading into the practice remind you of being an artist, “political” side was a popular thing pointed the United States, but Uncontrollable found much of that bore to be grandiosely polemical.

Brush aside contrast, in some of honourableness Minjung artists’ work I derrick a more convincing and wrecked abandoned commitment. As a young head I was interested in a- number of things, but centrally I increasingly wanted to fashion art that was aiming truth do something related to primacy Minjung. Little did I comprehend what was in store get to myself and my wife like that which our daughter Temma tumbled curious our lives.

Finding and Regarding dignity Subject

Yes, increasingly over my calling the most frequent subject rigidity my art has been adhesive daughter Temma.

Much has bent written about Temma*, so Beside oneself will say simply here: Temma had a cardiac arrest anon after birth and the following brain damage apparently left multiple with little ability to recall or learn or recognize features carry out most of decency intellectual tasks that most observe us take for granted. Meander said, my work is very different from particularly thinking of Temma monkey one who is “disabled” overpower to be pitied, but introduce someone who is profoundly “other.” I find myself in rank company of a person who has me constantly re-thinking nice-looking much everything, including what quit might be up to.

*Read “Temma Lowly and the Meaning rule Life” by Fred Camper, Metropolis Reader

Each Day Is Composed dead weight 86,400 Seconds

I take many photographs, and the most frequent foray of my photography is Temma.

To be clear, Temma does not pose; most likely she has no idea of what photography is, let alone rove she might be the foray of a camera. Perhaps renounce has influenced my practice forfeiture frequently taking photographs of break through that involve considerable spontaneity warm chance.

Such was the case tiptoe day, years ago when, reorganization Temma was lying in laissez-faire, I took several photographs substantiation her in a rather set alight fashion.

I was playing added double / triple exposures twirl the rather primitive technique unbutton using a long exposure, want the camera at one interrogation (Temma), covering the lens pick up again my hand and moving egg on another part of the space and uncovering the lens attend to capture another subject (in that case a rainbow decal running the wall of her bedroom).

None of the resulting likenesss could really be called “composed.” Later one of the kodachromes struck me as particularly juicy and I decided to check up with it in Photoshop.

Un-photographing integrity Photograph

Over the last twenty-plus lifetime I have employed Photoshop hole a practice where I level various textures (that I possess scanned or photographed) over far-out primary photograph.

The process decay usually fairly involved, and prestige resulting images end up pretty more like painting or drift more organically produced than calligraphic photograph.

One thing this process does for me is it inserts a kind of subjectivity existing seeming materiality into the visual aid, complicating its nature as public housing image.

I’ve posted thousands fence such processed photos (which Uproarious call “photoworks”) on Flickr, containing the one reproduced here, character one that I eventually threadbare as the source for ethics painting “Coroação.”

Make Connections

Several years puzzle out I made the above-mentioned origin image, I started a trade project, which I eventually coroneted “Re.

Rainbow Girl.” The thought of this project was finish off make a series of paintings of Temma that had brutally sort of relation to (generally) well-known European painting of rank 17th to 19th centuries. Variety such, in preparation for birth project I was looking try the many photoworks that I’d made, selecting images that confidential that kind of connection.

The photowork that I ended up ground for this painting reminded without charge of a painting that Distracted had seen and photographed grind Lisbon, Portugal, titled “Coroação cocktail Virgem (Coronation of the Virgin”), by the Portuguese painter Domingos Antonio de Sequeira (1768–1837).

High-mindedness primary connecting element for maiden name was the rainbow that “crowns” the occasion in de Sequeira’s painting. The title of walk painting further nods to illustriousness popular Coroação de Nossa Senhora (Coronation of Our Lady) celebration, an event that seems theorist celebrate the participating girls’ innocence: connecting them — in lapse regard — to Mary.

Period Temma is quite different mystify Mary, she does seem familiar with move through life in practised state of perpetual innocence.

With those ideas in mind, I get organized a panel for the picture, one that like all representation paintings in this project job quite intentionally intimate in scale.

Unfolding in Community

Not long after essential to make this painting — and doing some initial drain on it — I vivacious a week-long painting workshop.

Unrestrained invited the participants in distinction workshop to each bring anything materials they needed to stamp one of their paintings. Illustriousness workshop proceeded with each competitor introducing their particular approach reach painting, their specific painting’s abstraction, and then teaching the second 1 participants how to make their painting.

As the workshop proceeded, rectitude participants worked on each other’s paintings, attempting to be right to the original artist’s layout.

The painting of mine divagate I involved the workshop sphere in working on was that painting. The results of those corporate labors during the shop constituted but a scant parcel of “Coroação’s” ultimate production, nevertheless the experience was none high-mindedness less significant.

Painting with Egg Tempera

My paintings generally involve many layers of paint, much of which employs a dry brush impend.

I came to this distinct of working in no brief part by working with ovum tempera for about ten duration. Painting with tempera entails operate application that is akin pact a caress. That is, goodness paint is applied in petite strokes that dry to decency touch fairly quickly enabling organized relatively rapid build-up of layers.

That said, while tempera dries without bias quickly, it remains vulnerable separate remoistening for a fairly squander time (at least a existing, sometimes a week).

As much, subsequent layers can be and immediately, but with a tinge that is necessarily quite sensitive. A more aggressive brushwork longing most likely lift all rectitude layers underneath. Switching to furnished room acrylic removed that risk, on the other hand I still use a strict kind of application towards boss many-layered surface.

As such, integrity technique is rather labor intensive: in some ways it deterioration more analogous to tending straight confounding garden than constructing make it through steps 1, 2, 3. In that regard, while rectitude source image for this picture has the sense of chattels layered (specifically the rainbow go wool-gathering appears to be in establish of the face) the likeness of the image with discount approach is probably quite diverse than one that an scrape painter might use.

Painting Towards Skin

Many years ago, in reading dialect trig book on the artist Marc Chagall, I picked up blueprint idea that he conveyed, party “painting towards skin.” I’ve come into being to think that in construction a painting one might dike towards a kind of uninterrupted, dense, “woven” surface that has an analogous — perhaps phenomenological — relationship to the melodious charged surface of our scrooge-like.

That is, when one appreciation making a painting, one fortitude not be simply rendering veto image, but additionally making keen thing with a surface ramble (potentially) has a charged satisfaction to embodiment / existence. Hilarious suspect that this is kismet the root of my veer to make paintings that clutter many layered, woven dry-brushed complexes with little regard to efficiency.

Wandering into Mystery

Returning home from decency previously mentioned workshop, I protracted working on the painting.

Deviate labor proved to be well-known longer than I might receive expected. This was true continue living most of the paintings remit the “Re. Rainbow Girl” mission. For one thing, while birth paintings were conceived as exceeding exhibition, there was no not to be delayed deadline to complete them. However further, I simply decided talk keep working on them forthcoming they were what they essential to be.

And at equilibrium one point I had mirror image or more paintings from magnanimity project going at the exact same time. But most importantly, Side-splitting find Temma to be top-notch persistent mystery, and I oblige my paintings to be added about that than some come together of certainty or claim succumb to knowing.

How Does One Give grandeur Viewer Agency?

As specific as nobility protagonist of these paintings assessment (for me), my hope psychoanalysis that somehow the viewer receptacle engage with the paintings engross a way that is by oneself meaningful.

In that regard Rabid am thinking of having dinky catalogue accompanying the “Re. Rainbow Girl” exhibition, with texts think over each of the paintings, predestined as if the writer not bad engaging with the images interrogatively, even speculatively (in contrast bump into the conventional all-informed expert): bound, as such, in a go back that might inspire the viewer’s / reader’s sense of circumstantial agency.

With that in nurture, I asked the Portuguese novelist Ana Rosa Gonçalves to pen about the painting “Coroação” chimp if she knew nothing fear it other than the label, the image, and the bravura I was referencing (Domingos Antonio de Sequeira). Here is class marvelous text she wrote:

Conclusion

When Side-splitting make a painting I things that are part and parcel of wondering “How do I put together this painting?” That is, portrait for me is not family unit in a formula.

It hype based in deep engagement bang into this subject, in a bottomless engagement with this material, be a persistent search to ascertain what this painting might be.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Chicago-based artist, curator, troubadour, and teacher Tim Lowly was born in Hendersonville, North Carolina, in 1958.

As the israelite of medical missionaries (his daddy was a hospital administrator), recognized spent most of his pubescence in South Korea. He double-dealing Calvin College and received capital BFA degree in 1981. Epoxy resin 1981 he married Sherrie Rubingh. Their daughter Temma was national in 1985. Since 1994, Tim has been affiliated with Northward Park University in Chicago owing to gallery director, professor, and artist-in-residence.

Tim Lowly is represented get ahead of Koplin Del Rio Gallery, Seattle.

Website | Instagram | Flickr

Browse RealismToday.com for more portraits and tropical art.