I have been an artist in photography, video art & performance art, and since 1994 in printmaking showing in regional, national and international exhibits. My work of the last few years has involved the exploration of photography and printmaking as a hybrid medium of expression. The work isn't contained within a genre, although landscape and still life studies dominate, but shows concern with texture, the hand manipulation of the image and surface.Â
  For me photography is another way to create images. My Dad gave me a 35 mm camera when I was 11, as I was constantly 'borrowing' his whenever I could get my hands on it; when I was 13 I entered my first photography contest.
  Later all through Viet Nam and four years in the military I carried a camera - both as a way of interpreting what was happening to me and those around me, and to distance myself from it.
  I exhibited photography off and on until I began a career in cinematography and video in the late seventies and received a Master of Art in 1979 from the University of Missouri-KC. I taught mediated communications at Haskell Indian Nations University and later at Northern Illinois University. By 1986, bored with documentaries and commercial video production and seeking to return to the single image, I started a graduate program in studio art, while keeping my day job of producing educational programs in the arts. I found myself taking addition course-work in photography and worked with traditional printmakers in documenting their workshops and classes.
  Upon gaining my MFA, I a took a course in printmaking, and it was a zen moment in the studio: working the plates, inking, pulling prints. A wholly different tradition of the single image, a completely new toolset for me drew me. This was in 1992, and led to 18 hours of post-grad work with intaglio and relief techniques and many more hours with David Driesbach of Miracle Press who for years was the finest example of a person and an artist I'm sure I will ever know; for over a decade he invited me in to document the activities of Miracle Press and the yearly week long master printmaking sessions - his humor and technical skill shows me the way still.
  In 2002 I picked up a digital camera, mostly to record textures I found in wood, stone, mud, and textiles as references in printmaking, and I started thinking immediately about photography from the point of view of a printmaker.
  So I feel that I finally understand enough about the images that I respond to, and most importantly about the images I need to make, to take the journey as photographer and printmaker. Artistic life is full circle, I'm back to that happy kid seeing things truly for the first time in the view finder and the mind's eye, revealed on the plate and paper.
www.timburns-art.com for other work and background information; this functions as an on-line portfolio for me.
tim
Comments (11)
ARTWITHIN
They are like beautiful pools of paint. I love the colors and gem like quality. I would like to dive in and swim. Beautiful image indeed.
groegnitram
i see them :) another wonderful compo of yours, this one looks so exciting and playful, it's a pleasure to view your meditation series, i love them all!
vintorix
Another excellent work from Printmaster. If I were he I would rework ALL my old images into new print process. BTW if you are living in or near Sweden the "Inner Eye", the blue and red one you know will be displayed in Halmstad Sweden oct 19 - Nov 8 in a group show "Illusion". There is an opportunity to see one of Tims work produced by the new print process that is going the revolutionate Digital Art. Reception/opening 21th of october.
anaber
It is a very intense abstraction-we can dive and "see" into them.I love their boundary and the contrasts.And so different textures and shining colours.wonderful and another great one.
anahata.c
Tim, there's an ancient yogic scripture called the Yogavasishtamaharamayana in which a yogi holds up a stone and says that inside that stone he sees whole universes, and within each universe he sees whole worlds, and...you get the point: stone within stone, universe within universe...Your stones feel like the 'pre' version of that tale because they're filled not with universes—not yet—but with a primal fire or ooze, something luminous & hot which feels like it contains the germ of something big. I'm realizing, with each image in this series, that you're creating 'threshold' art, that is art at the threshold of consciousness. And you know, I'm sure, that certain meditative traditions would say that even these visions will dissolve into pure illusion ("we are such stuff as dreams are made on..."), but they'd also tell you that the sights at that level show us nothing less than the birth of the Cosmos, burgeoning like a vast & beautiful light show right inside our consciousness; or what one yogic manuscript called "the Great Theater of the Lantern"... Your forms in this piece are primal; the two dark stones have that strange glow we'd expect to find on entities under a high powered microscope, light at the place where light seems to begin. And the other forms are pre life squiggles, something primal and generative...Ana speaks eloquently of "boundary": I'm beginning to see that your work is in some ways about art-at-the-boundary. And when seen in the context of this series, these stones feel like stones at the boundary, at the boundary of inner consciousness. Sounds a bit abstruse, but it's true to the meditative journey. The yogis speak of 'first sounds': I see your series as 'first sights'. I truly love this piece. (My sitename, if you're interested, means "the place of unstruck sound"—ie, the sound of silence. It's literally the 'anahata chakra' [thus the "c"], but it's named after the place where sound begins. Threshold stuff. Thought you might find that interesting...)
helanker
WHat a wonderful glow from these stones, which to me rather look like Oil bobles. Bt the glow is so beautiful.
mss
Definitely meditative shapes and depth of color. Like those shapes left behind one's eyelids after pressing them with heals of your hands, as you've suggested before for inspiration. I thought I read in one of your explanations that you didn't use an airbrush (not enough room or something) as a varnishing method, therefore having to cover some works with glass. Are you talking traditional or photoshop airbrush here?
Marinette
I love the colors and gem like quality.:)
awadissk
very interesting and artistic work!!
kirri
Very nice unusual work!
jocko500
super looking