Ben Timmins paints photo realistic imagery on natural wood grain panels - images, as Sacha Kenny writes, beautifully interwoven with the ideals of symbolism.
There is something about the work of award-winning, New Zealand, artist Ben Timmins that draws you in, takes you on a journey and makes you want to know more. Whether it’s his incredible attention to detail, understanding of light or connection to nature - there is an almost spiritual essence to Ben’s work that is winning acclaim across the country.
Wellington based Ben spent his childhood on a sheep farm near the North Island rural town of Dannevirke and it was at high school that he discovered an easiness to painting, “I guess I had a natural talent, without blowing my trumpet as such, but it’s true I actually don’t know how I do it, I just know and it comes. I have worked very hard to get to the point of where I am today but from very early on I have innately understood the quality of light and use of texture as fundamental things”.
With his current work focusing mainly on nature, many including birds, Ben’s images are painted on panels of wood allowing the wood grain to become part of the image, weaving in and out of the painting questioning reality and illusion. For Ben the wood grain adds a completely different dimension to a piece, “you get this strong juxtaposition where there is super realistic paint work and people say ”ahh that’s so real“ but it’s not, that’s the illusion, the real part is the wood, the real wood that it’s painted on. So there’s always this kind of conundrum going on and people don’t actually know it but their mind is making a connection. There’s always a lot of subtleties going on within my work”.
A fan of the Pre-Rapaelite art movement whose work paid particular attention to detail, a luminous palette of bright colours and the ideals of romanticism, symbolism and the beauty of nature. Ben says he resonates with the movements interest in the connection between emotions and the sublimity in untamed nature, “that’s what they were responding to in their work and that’s kind of what I respond to, this kind of transcendence within nature”.
Also not unlike the Pre-Rapelites, Ben’s paintings are more than just a picture of something, for him his work includes a quality within that exudes a philosophical undertone:
“there’s a mystery, there’s something else going on and there is always this sublimity in the light which is there in nature that I think deserves to be highlighted.”
The beauty in Ben’s work is obvious however for him it is the subtle connection to the environment, to the wood grain, to light and nature that is the real beauty.
In June of this year Ben won the Wellington, Peoples Choice Award 2013 Cliftons Art Prize for his piece ‘Locus’, oil paint on 200 year old Japanese Kanji script.
Using the pages of a 200 year old Japanese Buddhist (Kanji) scripture, he found in a second hand shop years ago, Ben thinly sliced the rice paper script into long strips and used the text as a tonal aesthetic value and background support to the foreground image of a Heron in flight.
“The Kanji is like a sea of chopped up words or potential words, a sea of letters, within the image. This piece took hours and hours of cutting and pasting. I would get up at four in the morning and spend a couple of hours cutting and pasting – there’s something really nice about doing that, it was quite meditative, which I really enjoyed.”
Each cut of the ancient script made with integrity, Ben approached this art piece with an inner knowledge and understanding gifted from years of meditation and spiritual work, “I didn’t start this work as someone who didn’t understand the importance of the script, and honestly if the Buddha was alive I’m sure he‘d say ’listen this paper is actually just an illusion, a nothing', it’s just our perception of time and putting an importance on it that changes that”.
With limitless possibilities for his work in the future, Ben is keen to produce a very large art work, an image that engulfs the viewer, pulls them in and is almost overpowering, “I want to do some really large work, stuff that just takes forever to complete and for people to look at it and be just like ’man that is something incredible'. To me, that’s what people should be saying when they look at art work – they shouldn’t be just breezing on by”.
Ben is currently working on a number of pieces to be exhibited and for sale as part of the 2013 New Zealand Art Show, where he is a finalist in the Signature Award. Determined by a peoples choice vote, Ben has been the resipient of this award for the past two consecutive years (2012 and 2011).
