Tim McFarlane Studio: February 2025
"Innervisions", new work and quitting social media
Vermillion Shores in “Innervisions”
Hello friends, welcome to February! We’re one month closer to spring, so I hope that’s of some comfort to you. I’ve settled in with the reality of winter and am ready to ride it out. Things are actually mild here in Philly this week, so far, and that’s enough to keep my spirits up, along with being able to get to the studio and work.
Something else that I hope will lighten your spirits is if you’re in or around Atlanta, GA between this weekend and May 2nd, I hope you’ll check out the group show, “Innervisions” at the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum. My painting, Vermillion Shores, seen above, was curated into the show by artist Jamele Wright, Sr and Special Projects Curator at CAUAM, Clarke Browne. “Innervisions” brings together the works of contemporary and Black painters who engage with abstraction as a primary means of personal and cultural representation, illustrating a wider range of Black expression than what has been normally accepted as “Black Art”.
The opening reception for “Innervisions” is this Thursday, February 6th from 4:30-7pm. Unfortunately, I cannot attend the opening, but will go to see the show before it closes in May. I hope that if you have friends, family and/or colleagues in the Atlanta area, that you will share the news of this exhibition, thanks in advance:
Innervisions
February 6-May 2, 2024
Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, 223 James P Brawley Dr SW Atlanta, GA 30314
Opening reception: Thursday, February 6th, 4:30-7pm
Exhibition event page: Clark Atlanta University Art Museum Spring '25 Exhibition Season
[In The Studio]
New work
This currently untitled piece is my first larger painting of 2025. I sacrificed a painting that I made last year to realize this one. The painting underneath sat for months with no resolution, so I ditched it. Covered it up and now there’s this one, which connects with three smaller works I made in January. Right now, I’m enjoying exploring these single form paintings. I like the challenge of working within limitations like these because they can make me reach deeper to come up with a compelling piece. There’s foreground, form, background and edges. When you add in colors and applications, there’s a big space for exploration to happen. I’m looking forward to expanding on this idea more as the year goes on.
More Soft Poems
I’m finally jumping back into the waters of the Soft Poem series. Last Friday, I was able to buy some new panels to paint on and began laying down the very first layer(s) for the next six in this series. This was made possible by the new collector who gave Soft Poem 6 a forever home (above). I’m excited for this next iteration of Soft Poems because I’ve had some time to think about the first series and what I may do for this new series. There’s no set itinerary other than to continue experimenting with color, space, transparency and surface using the glyphs as the only object element. My goal is to have these six, and hopefully more, ready to collect by early spring, 2025.
In the meantime, there are seven of the original series of sixteen Soft Poems still available through the Bridgette Mayer Gallery:
215.413.8893 or bmayer@bmayerart.com
Going off of the reservation, aka, my social media exodus
I’m not going to rehash it all here, but most of you may have heard about the recent and probably on-going exodus from Meta and ‘X’ and the recent one week boycott of said platforms. Most of this has been brewing for a while and grew larger after Twitter was bought by Elon Musk and has reached a fever pitch since Zuckerberg disbanded Meta’s third party fact-checking staff and is allowing LGBTQ+ people to be labeled as “mentally ill”. Most recently, there was a call for a one-week boycott of Meta’s platforms where users were asked to log off from their social media accounts for a week. I don’t know how any of that turned out because I’d already been not posting for a while. I deleted Twitter not long before Muck bought it and with IG, I’ve been slowing down on posting there for a while. In fact, tonight (Feb. 4th) was the first time I posted on IG since January 7th to announce the “Innervisions” show I have work in (see above).
My disengagement with social media began back in 2022 when my original IG art account was hacked. After that, I really began questioning my continued reliance on these platforms that are only there to make the owners rich through our attention. We also have to jump through hoops (reels, storie feeds, sponsored posts…) in the hope of gaining a few new followers. I changed my approach to not caring at all about trying to gain more followers and just posted when and how I wanted.
That said, I’ve maintained an email list going back to the late ‘90s or so. Over time, my use of it waxed and waned but over the past few years, I’ve leaned into it more to connect with anybody who are engaged with my studio work and support what I’m doing. It’s grown slowly due to others sharing my emails with like-minded people and from recommendations. On Meta, I’m lucky to reach even 5% of the accounts I’m connected to and only a smattering of unconnected users after that.
Time is our most precious commodity and I don’t want to spend more of mine “working” for scraps on social media. Those of you reading this are already invested in what I do and I sincerely thank you for your attention and allowing me to connect with you every month. It means a lot to me that I get to share my life and work with you.
If you follow me on social media, I’ll be phasing out IG and FB over the next couple of weeks. I’ll leave my account open for now (not sure how long that will be, honestly) mostly as a placeholder and leave a message for how people can continue staying connected outside of social media, if they wish. The main places for that will be my website, this email newsletter, my studio blog and good old email: tim@timmcfarlane.com.
I don’t know how any of this is going to go, but I’m already excited about less time spent giving my attention away and using it for better things.
Exit: we went outside
We’ve had a couple of milder days here in Philly, so Julia and I took advantage of that to get out and enjoy some nature via Wissahickon Valley Park. Walking on most of the upper trails was cause for being more present than usual, since there was a lot of mud and so many opportunities to go tumbling down the side of a hill. Nevertheless, we persevered and had a great time out there. I definitely needed this hit of nature after the year that was January. Also, the winter offers a lot of views that can’t be enjoyed the same way as when the leaf coverage is abundant at other times of the year.
That’s it for this month. I’ll be back in March with more updates and other news for you. Let me know what you think about anything in this email or other thoughts:
Thanks for being here and I’ll see you soon!