Simulacrum by Timothy Wilson
Timothy Wilson
Simulacrum
February 13 — March 13, 2024
In Simulacrum, Timothy Powers Wilson’s oil paintings and charcoal sketches center around the concept of representation, both of his own reflection and his reflections on nature. During his recent residency at Prairie, Wilson created self-portraits and landscapes on paper, canvas, and panel using loose brushstrokes and lines in a pared-down palette of taupe, sepia, loden, and moss with occasional hits of Colonial blue and apricot. The resulting body of work is both stark and expressive, with a kind of purity that “eschews fantasy and flare,” as Wilson says.
Known for plein air painting, particularly for his often dark renderings of the tempestuous Maine coastline, Wilson turned his eye inward during his sojourn at Prairie: “For two weeks I worked in the most rudimentary way possible: a pad of newsprint, a piece of charcoal, and a mirror,” he says. The resulting pieces are intimate and highly personal, representations or vestiges of a process of introspection and confrontation. Though his gestures are confident, Wilson still hides himself behind his work. In his self-portraits, he notes that, “the figure almost becomes rendered, but changes and manipulates itself away. It wants to be on display, but hasn’t fully resolved itself.” Notably, he never fully shows his face.
The work in Simulacrum is raw and honest, distilled into essential yet abstract forms of both landscape and the artist himself. Wilson describes his residency: “The work I made while at Prairie was a paradigm shift of the most existential. I was able to introspectively analyze, explore, and depict, in the most basic and useful way possible which, had I been in my typical studio practice, I would not have explored. After two weeks of analyzing myself in the mirror, parsing through my emotions, documenting on paper and canvas, I felt fulfilled.”
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