Philip Martin Gallery is pleased to present, “A Green Place," an exhibition of new paintings by UK-based artist Tim Garwood. The compositional energy, dynamic color and rich texture of Garwood's work derives in part from the feeling of London and rural Somerset, the places between which he lives and works.
Tim Garwood's work engages with abstraction as a mode of personal expression. His paintings foreground a deep engagement with urban and rural environs and reflect the ways in which we live today, often standing with our feet in multiple worlds. As one writer has written, in Garwood's practice, "there are no obstacles between abstraction and association, improvisation, and control, only the endless exploration, transformative capabilities and potential possibilities of painting itself." Garwood himself points to the power of looking and responding: "I am happy to allow myself to follow spontaneous thoughts and accept that occasionally that takes me in unexpected directions.”
Tim Garwood builds up the surfaces of his paintings in layers of poured, squirted and brushed acrylic that he lays over a base of gathered materials applied to canvas. He finds his materials in woods and fields, at building sites, along city streets. Like Joan Mitchell or Frank Bowling, two artists who in their own work jumped off from the later paintings of Claude Monet, Tim Garwood opens ways in which paint and other materials can be separated from direct representation in order to take on a greater feeling of place and one's individual response to it. Garwood's pictures have an evocative logic with successive layers of line, color and shape figuring a deep space that often has a sense of a horizon line. He notes, "These works feel like landscapes, or the feeling of a landscape at least.”
"If you are observant then creativity is a natural reaction," Tim Garwood says, commenting that, "Everything is relevant if it is helpful in pushing the process along.” "Emotion comes in its own time," Pierre Bonnard once wrote. The French master, known for works addressing the color and visual texture of the world around him was - like Garwood - more than happy to spend years on a painting, negotiating the interaction between how we look at things, depict them, and feel about the results. In our current age at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century - a moment in which one could choose to spend one’s inner life with corporate content and chatbots - the power of individual vision with regard to art-making as a crossroad for what we experience and how we build upon it opens doors to the kind of radical path to beauty and personal expression Garwood embraces and invites us to join.
The work of Tim Garwood (b, 1984, Epsom, UK) will be the subject of an upcoming solo exhibition at Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA). The exhibition will be Garwood's first at a gallery in the United States. Tim Garwood's work has been seen in solo and group exhibitions at Sim Smith (London, UK); Lyndsey Ingram (London, UK); Denny Gallery (Hong Kong); Arario Gallery (Shanghai, China); Rich Mix (London, UK); Combustión Espontánea (Madrid, Spain); Unit 1 Gallery (London, UK). Tim Garwood's work has recently been featured in the Art Newspaper and Then There Were Us. In 2020, a monograph of his work, "Abroad From Earth," was published in the UK. Tim Garwood lives and works in London and Somerset.
Tim Garwood's exhibition, "A Green Place" is online January 29 - February 12, 2025.
Tim Garwood’s work will be the subject of a webinar conversation Friday, January 31, 2005 at 12noon PST.
Philip Martin Gallery is open Wednesday-Saturday 11-5 and Tuesdays by appointment. The gallery is located at 3342 Verdugo Road, Los Angeles CA 90065.
For additional images and information please call 323-507-2037 or email info@philipmartingallery.com.
