Timothy Creswick

I am an an artist living in Austin, TX. I paint primarily in oils, but on occasion work in other media, such as charcoal, watercolor, ink, and installation pieces. My artistic practice comes from a desire to make interesting images that exist both physically as paint on a canvas, with interlaced texture, brushmarks and corporeality, and as an image with its interpreted meaning, suggested emotions, and associated social/political/artistic context. I allow changes in meaning during the process to create a less predictable product. If I knew exactly what I wanted the work to look like before starting then there would be little reason to make it. For me, it is essential that a painting diverge from the physical reality of the source material (though I insist that the painting keeps its own physical reality). If I intend to paint an exact replica of the physical world, with all its detail, then I should make a photograph. If I intend to depict three-dimensionality and form in space, then I should make a sculpture. To treat painting as a mechanical, rendering process in this way excludes more exciting possibilities of portraying unseen forces, emotions, abstractions and the surreal. My most recent work abstracts images of decay or detritus, turning forgotten objects into something beautiful.