Tim Reimensnyder paintings
Artist Statement
I am a blue collar painter. My job is making the everyday subject work aesthetically by making marks on a canvas. It is the sorting out of the elements within the subject through use of color and a painterly application. The effort requires solitary, focused time to grow intimate with a subject. This intimacy is what Stuart Shils has described as "the visual kiss" (a description I particularly love). It is a very basic human reaction, relationship and experience expressed visually.
Bio:
I have been drawing for pleasure for as long as I can remember, and painting on and off over the years at intervals generated by the ebb and flow of life. Out of high school I attended Alfred University, later transferring to the Portland School of Art (now Maine College of Art) in Portland Maine. When our children were young, my wife Marie and I worked at home designing t-shirts, printing them as a form of painting. More traditional drawing and painting resurfaced when our children became more independent. We started going to a figure drawing group and I started painting more. In 2010 I was diagnosed with a Gastrointestinal Stromal tumor (cancer), I then made a conscious decision to dedicate more time to painting. My decision to paint has been as life changing as cancer.
It was about that time also (2010) that I went back to school studying with Janet Conlon Manyan at MECA through their Continuing Studies courses. It was working with Janet that I began focusing on painting the figure and portraiture. I believe that there is a special challenge in figurative painting with uncompromising information with which I have to be as faithful as I am creative. It controls me as I attempt to recreate it. When I paint, I look for what I love about a subject. I try to balance in my painting -play as well as expression, to be spontaneous but thoughtful. Each piece being an expression of the freedom, opportunity and the challenge that painting offers.
I live and paint with my wife of 30 years in New Gloucester Maine.
I am a blue collar painter. My job is making the everyday subject work aesthetically by making marks on a canvas. It is the sorting out of the elements within the subject through use of color and a painterly application. The effort requires solitary, focused time to grow intimate with a subject. This intimacy is what Stuart Shils has described as "the visual kiss" (a description I particularly love). It is a very basic human reaction, relationship and experience expressed visually.
Bio:
I have been drawing for pleasure for as long as I can remember, and painting on and off over the years at intervals generated by the ebb and flow of life. Out of high school I attended Alfred University, later transferring to the Portland School of Art (now Maine College of Art) in Portland Maine. When our children were young, my wife Marie and I worked at home designing t-shirts, printing them as a form of painting. More traditional drawing and painting resurfaced when our children became more independent. We started going to a figure drawing group and I started painting more. In 2010 I was diagnosed with a Gastrointestinal Stromal tumor (cancer), I then made a conscious decision to dedicate more time to painting. My decision to paint has been as life changing as cancer.
It was about that time also (2010) that I went back to school studying with Janet Conlon Manyan at MECA through their Continuing Studies courses. It was working with Janet that I began focusing on painting the figure and portraiture. I believe that there is a special challenge in figurative painting with uncompromising information with which I have to be as faithful as I am creative. It controls me as I attempt to recreate it. When I paint, I look for what I love about a subject. I try to balance in my painting -play as well as expression, to be spontaneous but thoughtful. Each piece being an expression of the freedom, opportunity and the challenge that painting offers.
I live and paint with my wife of 30 years in New Gloucester Maine.
