The inspiration for Timothy Tompkins’s paintings stem from an interest of engagement with the tropes and language of the medium’s historical movements such as pop, still life, and history painting. The paintings are often grouped into series by subject, and frequently show variations on a similar theme. Tompkins’s ideas about art-making express a combination of concepts: the material nature of painting and how the viewer perceives its surface, the history of painting as a medium, abstraction, memory, representation, and technology. Using commercial sign enamel, the enamel paintings are executed on 1/8” thick aluminum panels. The artist manipulates the liquid state of the paint to make more evident the traced contours of the image and form. This quality gives a transitory effect to the piece, as if the image is still manifesting. His work is included in the collections of the Fondazione Benetton (Treviso, Italy), Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation (Los Angeles, CA), West Collection (Oaks, PA) and Harvard Business School (Cambridge, MA). Solo exhibitions include DCKT Contemporary (New York, NY), Studio La Citta (Verona, Italy), Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Project (CA), and the Manhattan Beach Creative Arts Center (CA). Group exhibitions include Fondazione Querini Stampalia (Venice, Italy), LA Louver, (Venice, CA), Santa Monica Museum of Art (CA), Laguna Art Museum, (Laguna Beach, CA) and Contemporary Art Center (New Orleans, LA), among others.
Website
http://www.timothytompkins.com
