2′ x 4′, acrylic on canvas

Thanks for the feature, Joan! Grand Marais painter, Tim Young, is working on a series of paintings of fish in trees. Two of these wonderful paintings have been installed in a room at Cook County Higher Education, and three of them will be featured in the Itasca Community College’s magazine, “Spring Thaw” which comes out next week. Young will give a presentation about his art at a special event in Grand Rapids on May 1. Stay tuned for details. http://www.northshoreartscene.com/

Cruiser

The dog cut outs have moved to their own blog! http://timouthdogs.blogspot.com

12″ x 12″, Acrylic on Canvas

Joan gave me a mention in her blog, North Shore Art Scene this week.

Visit her blog at: http://northshoreartscene.com/

See Details below…

I’ve been showing these images to my friends, and reactions have been mixed. I think that’s great. One friend told me she’s up in the air about this series of paintings, and I said “so are the fish.” I like doing them, and I think they’d be very entertaining in a restaurant setting. You could count fish while you wait for your dinner.

More than ten years ago, I painted a map of Lake Superior on a restaurant wall. Whenever I go in there, I see people staring at it, and it makes me feel good.

I’ve often wondered if there was a way to get people to look at a painting longer than a few seconds. I do it, too. A lot of times, I only give art a quick glance. But I love it when something stops me in my tracks for longer than that. It may be something poignant, or whimsical. It may be something as simple as a color or a brush stroke. I never know what will appeal to another person. Nothing appeals to everyone. I’ve found that trying to paint something that “people will like” is a losing proposition. I’ve tried to express someone else’s vision for a painting before, and the results have been ugly. Both in the image and in the frustration of it all. I have to paint for me. If something is meaningful to me, perhaps it will strike a chord in someone else. Maybe you’ll love this. Maybe you’ll hate it. I’m happy with that.

Down in the Amazonian Flood Plain Forests, there are over a thousand species of trees that have adapted to freshwater flooding for up to 9 months out of the year.

During the high water phase, the water will rise up to 30 or 40 feet above the forest floor, and fish are able to feed on seeds from fruit bearing trees.

1. Back when I had a little coffee shop/art gallery housed in a vintage railway caboose (there was a goldfish pond out back), I had a dream one night where I walked into the caboose, and saw a fish swimming behind the cash register. That image has stuck with me, and I’m fascinated by the thought of fish swimming behind objects in the air.

2. I was hanging a show in a beautiful little cafe one night. There was a couple there taking down their photographs of northern lights. The woman said to me “Don’t you ever get tired of painting fish?” I was puzzled. I had abstracts, paintings of trees, fish, dogs… and EVERY one of their pictures was of northern lights over trees.

No, I don’t get tired of painting trees or fish. When I do, I’ll stop.

It occurs to me that putting these fish in the forest air is similar to, or opposite of (which is it?) the time I put all those corgis under the water…