Today we’d like to introduce you to Tim Stone.
Hi Tim, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I was always drawing, and interpreting images through drawing but I didn’t get fully hooked to my core until I was 17 and experienced visual art at the Nelson Atkins Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago within months of each other. I really solidified by decision to go to art school and I haven’t looked back. Today I am a professional artist and professor, teaching and creating in tandem.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
There are definitely ups and downs. I think the creation of a painting is a perfect microcosm for the overall experience of being an artist. Sometimes there’s a clear goal, and sometimes you’re going off of nothing but feeling and some strange drive to create. There’s initial excitement getting started with accompanying energy. There is sometimes pure dread, followed by lethargic heaviness. There’s always an ugly stage, and sometimes an expected breakthrough. Ultimately there’s pride in starting and finishing something new and hopefully fresh. And for me, a feeling like this is what I am suppose to be doing. I think you just have to keep making the work. However you can, because everything stems from that. A restaurant can’t exist without food being made in the back, no matter how elaborate the decor or charming the waitstaff. You will mostly experience rejection and defeat. Which makes the wins even more special.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am creating a painterly language emphasizing the hybridization between our physical and digital experiences. I physically replicate, imitate, and mimic digital languages to express how confusing and lost it can be to operate in a world that is both super connected and isolating, mediated through a screen. My work sutures digital efficiency and gestural inefficiency through physical marks and colors that are rambunctious, fiery, and ambiguous in their affect. There is tension between the ordinary and the superlative, between what is natural and artificial. I am examining how bemusedly liminal our physical and digital spaces have become.
I either use watercolor paper or I build my own strainers and create customs sized paintings. I am around to have carved out a spot in the Wichita Art Scene and have been expanding into the Kansas City Scene as well as travel around the country to exhibit at Two different universities in Montana and Arkansas over the last 4 years.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I think leaning into your own practice for income. There’s really no guarantees you’ll be able to support yourself. It’s a little stressful but super rewarding when it’s viable, working for yourself. I think that, at least for me, you can’t really make work with the idea of selling it. You need to make the work you feel or think is important. Or is fueled by inspiration. I think that’s the work that is you, and will take you further, but it’s still risky.
Pricing:
- Do not underprice your work, a hard lesson to learn
- Respect your work, yourself, and your audience
- I think a good way to start would be pricing your work by square inch
Contact Info:
- Website: https://timstone.studio
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trstone88/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tim.stone.102
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsFwGaV50Po
