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Date: 1/9/2024
EASTHAMPTON — Jane Timken doesn’t often talk about how she paints, but when she opens up, simplicity comes out.
“Somebody once said, when you make a painting you’re not representing something, you’re re-presenting something,” Timken said. “The idea of reordering it … into an interesting painting, is a basic challenge.”
Timken’s works, on display in the Back Gallery of the Oxbow Gallery, are very interesting. They glow with internal lights. Working mostly in watercolors now, Timken catches the subtle and soft quality of her subjects, defining them with bursts of rich colors. Her brush conveys a love for the common and ordinary, bottles, blossoms and a chickadee.
Timken, now 80, proves it’s never too late to dedicate yourself to a youthful passion. As a newly matriculated teenager, she took a studio art class at Smith College. She loved it — but without confidence and support, she segued into art history. She earned a PhD in Byzantine Art, lectured part-time, but learned she’d rather make things than talk about them.
Timken produced and published books on the history of art, transitioned to letterpress quality books, works of art in their own right. “Big City Primer,” a collection of poetry and images, a collaboration with John Yau and Bill Barrette, won accolades.
“The books became less scholarly over time, less about art and more art projects unto themselves,” Timken said.
Timken gave up the book trade several years after the terrorist attacks of 2001. She closed her shop, located a mile from the World Trade Center, and donated the press and lead type to Smith College. At the age of 60, she finally dedicated herself to a first love, painting.
“I’m not changing the world. I’m not addressing racial equality. I don’t do that kind of painting,” Timken said. Her ambition is to make art that stops people in their tracks. “They wouldn’t just walk by it and say, ‘oh, that’s nice.’ It would … maybe be a good companion.”
Her focus remained on doing, not talking. “I’ve never had to think about this all at once.”
Timken also began painting to record the beauty of the world she saw while wading in streams, casting a fly. Flyfishing took her to beautiful places all over the world. While casting weighted lines in Patagonia, a wild area at the southern tip of South America, her camera captured beautiful streams and natural forests.
She also knew where those photographs would end up: in the drawer.
“In those days, they got printed, went in a drawer and you never saw them again,” Timken said. “I thought it would be really wonderful if I could do some watercolors.”
Entering her sixth decade, when most people think of retiring from the struggle of work, Timken began learning her craft. She took art classes, studied with experienced painters including Lennart Anderson and Susan Walp, and most recently, Joel Janowitz. Timken still takes classes and continues to learn.
While at the easel, painting makes Timken’s world stand still. She forgets the challenges of age and the state of the world. But there is no romantic notions that it’s a form of meditation. Painting is too hard.
“It’s not like sitting silently,” Timken said. “You’re struggling, you’re trying to get it right, or trying to do new things … Sometimes it’s infuriating. How much is it intentional. How much is accidental? How much is the energy of your arm? How much is the paper you’re working on? All those things go into it. That part of it isn’t meditative.”
The show, “Recent Works”, featuring paintings in watercolor and oil by Jane Timken, will be on display in the Back Gallery of the Oxbow Gallery from Jan. 4 through 24.