Culture of Adoration
Culture of Adoration, Tim Lowly © 2008, Derwent drawing pencil on acrylic on panel, 60" x 120".
[assistance with this work by Charity Kittler and Katie Cooper]
Chicago writer Karen Halverson-Schreck wrote the following in relation to this work:
rise up children, sing a glorious future
"I stand before Tim Lowly’s triptych, Culture of Adoration, trying to name what I feel.
Vertigo. That’s my sensation, as if the immense bow, the great bowl of the horizon—my perspective—has been gently turned on end, and I am unanchored. Hoping for orientation, I gaze down at the painting’s focus (no traditional vanishing point here), at the kernel of young woman on the bed. To put it bluntly: she is not your typical artist’s model. She is the antithesis of what our culture idealizes, idolizes, adores. Severely disabled, physically vulnerable, yet luminously present, she frustrates my assumptions regarding form and content, my expectations of beauty and meaning. Cipher-like, she seems invulnerable to the laws of logic or aesthetics. Perhaps only some mysterious code of love and devoted, disciplined attention can interpret her secrets.
Attending to her now, I think: oculus, inverted. Most specifically, I recall the Roman Pantheon, that grim and glorious temple—all shadows, but for its great eye, open to the sky. She seems such as this, earthbound.
And look at the others, painted in the gloom behind her, gazing down at her, also seeking light. Young artists, all, although this is not your artist’s typical studio—perfectly composed and illuminated. Instead, Lowly’s is an awkward world, distorted and unpredictable, less than refined, even unfinished; or he represents it as so. Faces and figures move in and out of focus, or are erased altogether, along with awareness and comprehension. And there are odd angles, black voids to fall into.
Rise up children—
I find hope in the intention and focus of these artists, in Lowly’s tender, clumsy testament to their making, in this look we share into the unknown, where a certain absence creates its own presence, and mystery is all the meaning."
- Karen Halvorsen-Schreck, 2008
NA
Culture of Adoration
Culture of Adoration, Tim Lowly © 2008, Derwent drawing pencil on acrylic on panel, 60" x 120".
[assistance with this work by Charity Kittler and Katie Cooper]
Chicago writer Karen Halverson-Schreck wrote the following in relation to this work:
rise up children, sing a glorious future
"I stand before Tim Lowly’s triptych, Culture of Adoration, trying to name what I feel.
Vertigo. That’s my sensation, as if the immense bow, the great bowl of the horizon—my perspective—has been gently turned on end, and I am unanchored. Hoping for orientation, I gaze down at the painting’s focus (no traditional vanishing point here), at the kernel of young woman on the bed. To put it bluntly: she is not your typical artist’s model. She is the antithesis of what our culture idealizes, idolizes, adores. Severely disabled, physically vulnerable, yet luminously present, she frustrates my assumptions regarding form and content, my expectations of beauty and meaning. Cipher-like, she seems invulnerable to the laws of logic or aesthetics. Perhaps only some mysterious code of love and devoted, disciplined attention can interpret her secrets.
Attending to her now, I think: oculus, inverted. Most specifically, I recall the Roman Pantheon, that grim and glorious temple—all shadows, but for its great eye, open to the sky. She seems such as this, earthbound.
And look at the others, painted in the gloom behind her, gazing down at her, also seeking light. Young artists, all, although this is not your artist’s typical studio—perfectly composed and illuminated. Instead, Lowly’s is an awkward world, distorted and unpredictable, less than refined, even unfinished; or he represents it as so. Faces and figures move in and out of focus, or are erased altogether, along with awareness and comprehension. And there are odd angles, black voids to fall into.
Rise up children—
I find hope in the intention and focus of these artists, in Lowly’s tender, clumsy testament to their making, in this look we share into the unknown, where a certain absence creates its own presence, and mystery is all the meaning."
- Karen Halvorsen-Schreck, 2008
NA