Tim McFarlane Studio :: October 2023
A trio of shows and more...
Hello all,
Fall is here and I’m all for it! The shorts are packed but it’s not quite heavy sweater weather, so this is one of my sweet spots for the year, weather wise. So far, September and October have found me being really busy in the studio and there’s been a couple of surprises along the way. I have a couple of exhibition announcements to share with you first, so let’s dig in!
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First up, there’s Something Big, Something Small at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery. From the press release: “Something Big, Something Small” explores the idea of scale and shifting scale in art. The ten artists featured in the exhibition were asked to create or illustrate the concept of a shift in scale – whether large or small, conceptual, literal or ambiguous. My two works in the show create a shift in scale from the device of a constructed mirror image, with two works that are similar in composition but different in size. The two paintings that I have in this show mirror each other, but with different proportions: the smaller piece is 12” x 12” and the larger is 60” x 40”. It was interesting seeing how the image changes not only in scale, but also in shape. Something Big, Something Small also includes work by:
Arden Bendler Browning, Erika b Hess, Michele Kishita, Erin McIntosh, Eileen Neff Antonio Puri, Rebecca Rutstein, Ellen Soffer & Damian Stamer.
Something Big, Something Small will be on view from Tuesday, October 31 to December 30, 2023 at Bridgette Mayer Gallery. On Friday, November 3, Bridgette Mayer Gallery will host an artist panel that I will be a part of in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' Rhoden Auditorium, 128 N. Broad Street, Hamilton Building, Philadelphia, PA 19102, from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Immediately following, there will be an exhibition opening and reception at Bridgette Mayer Gallery until 7:30 pm.
Bridgette Mayer Gallery, 709 Walnut Street, 1st Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19106
P: 215.413.8893 • E: bmayer@bmayerart.com
Shifting Forms: 5 Decades of Abstraction
Shifting Forms: 5 Decades of Abstraction at the Susquehanna Art Museum, includes Undercurrent, a painting of mine from 2007 that’s on loan for this show from the collection of the Samek Art Museum at Bucknell University. It’s an honor to have my work in conversation with the likes of Sol Lewitt, Nancy Graves, Chakaia Booker, Helen Frankenthaler and more. From the press release: “Shifting Forms: 5 Decades of Abstraction, traces radical shifts made by abstract artists over the last 50 years. The artists featured in this exhibition employ innovative approaches to mark making and the experimental use of fine art and everyday materials that expand the language and legacy of abstraction.” Shifting Forms… is on view until. January 21, 2024.
Susquehanna Art Museum • 1401 North 3rd Street • Harrisburg, PA 17102 • 717.233.8668
Flowing Abstraction: Contemporary African Diaspora Printmaking
I’m thrilled to announce my participation in Flowing Abstraction: Contemporary African Diaspora Printmaking at the Brandywine Workshop and Archives in Philadelphia. There will be a selection of woodblock prints from my Tomorrow’s Conversations (TC) series in the Brandywine’s collection, made during a (partially) remote artist residency at the Workshop in 2020. TC is a varied edition of 34 prints where no two are alike and feature my glyph imagery arranged in various compositions resembling texts of an unidentifiable sort. There is a selection of this series still available to be viewed and purchased through the Bridgette Mayer Gallery: Tim McFarlane: Tomorrow’s Conversations.
Flowing Abstraction… will have an opening reception on Thursday, November 2, 2023 from 6-8pm. As of this writing, there is still more information to come and I will pass it on to you as soon as I have it.
Brandywine Workshop and Archives • 730 South Broad Street • Philadelphia, PA, 19146• 267.831.2928
New Paintings
I’ve been spending some time recently updating my website with images of new paintings, four of which are above. Over the past year, I’ve been expanding on an idea that originally took hold a few years ago, but I’m just now beginning to get a handle on how I want to work with it. This has been happening at the same time that I’ve been working on the mostly glyph-related paintings. Seeing the parallels and divergences between different bodies of work developing alongside one another is always interesting and a little un nerving sometimes. For me, moving from one body of work to another is almost always a drawn out affair. Regardless of how it may look on the outside, whenever I’m making a move from one series to another, there’s usually a period of adjustment as I try to make sense of the new work as best I can. Honestly, there’s no “making sense” of anything that I’m in the middle of making. There’s just the jumping off of that cliff and figuring it out on the way down.
New works available on my Bridgette Mayer Gallery artist page
In the studio
This is just a small taste of what’s been happening in the studio lately. In the coming months, I’m planning on taking some of these ideas and others to make larger works this winter, leading up to my next solo exhibition at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery in Spring 2024.
Misc…
I recently had the pleasure of being on an artist financial panel during a two-day workshop at the Pennsylvania Academy of The Fine Arts (PAFA) that Bridgette Mayer hosted as part of her Art MBA program. I was joined by fellow painters, Michele Kishita, Erin McIntosh and Rebecca Rutstein. This is the kind of thing that I wished was around when I was a younger artist. The stigma that still persists around artists talking about finances and how they manage to create sustainable lives as creative people is fast becoming a thing of the past and I welcome that. There’s no perfect way to make a creative life, but being informed about how you can do it is priceless.
Seen
John Rhoden: Determined To Be at PAFA
Speaking of PAFA, I also had the opportunity to attend the opening reception of “Determined To Be: The Sculpture of John Rhoden”, curated by Dr. Brittany Webb, the Evelyn and Will Kaplan Curator of Twentieth Century Art and the John Rhoden Collection. This is an amazing exhibition of works by African-American sculptor, John Rhoden (1916-2001). Rhoden’s career was previously mostly unknown to me, even though I’d seen one of his commissioned sculptures outside of the African-American Museum in Philadelphia for years. This beautiful show brings to light the work of a truly remarkable Black 20th century sculptor.
Endpoint
Wherever you are in the world, I hope that you and your loved ones are safe and sound. We are going through a time of great strife, both natural and man-made. My hope is that we can find it within ourselves to reach out and support those who need it the most. With a simple gesture as just listening to someone, we can lessen the burden of grief and suffering that’s going around. Thanks for reading and allowing me to be a part of your day. Until next time, keep being you, we need that!
TM