Lowly
        resume 

        
 

        
The daily
        art of being

        
by Josef Woodard

        
from the Santa
        Barbara News September 6 - 12, 2002

        
Chicago-based painter Tim Lowly's disarmingly
        fine exhibition at Westmont College's Reynolds Gallery makes
        for a layered viewing experience. We're initially struck by the
        potency and sureness of his painting, and the lack of cozy cliche
        in what is a basically realist style. But the impression deepens
        considerably, and elements of humanity expand, upon learning
        of the background of these paintings.

        
Primarily, the subject in Lowly's beautifully
        painted and thoughtfully considered works is his daughter Temma,
        a severely menatly and physically disabled teenager, portrayed
        in everyday scenes around the house. Equipped with that knowledge,
        we're not allowed the usual detachment in the art-watching process.
        Aspects of compassion and existential curiosity are naturally
        threaded through paintings which, at root, investigate and also
        celebrate the alternate reality of a loved one. Normally trivial
        scenes, of Temma bathing or perched on a couch before a television,
        are suddenly elevated by circumstance.

        
As Karen Halvorsen-Schreck writes in an
        insightful catalog essay, "For Temma, life is less about
        doing than being and it is at least in part a person's response
        to her being that helps shaper her significance."

        

        


        


        
The highlight of the show is a trilogy
        of paintings of Temma in the bath, with which Lowly gets at something
        essential about her being, an by extension, consensus reality.
        Temma lies in soapy water, inert, and seen from a perspective
        over the shoulder of a parental bath-giver, a second-hand observation.
        It's a scene half-seen, a story in progress. Generally, the artist
        seems less interested in creating whole, finished portraits than
        in touching on qualities of life as an ever-mysterious, and very
        much moving target.

        
Part of his method in that regard is to
        steer away from painting conventions, often using the out-of-focus
        appearance made famous by the important German artist Gerhard
        Richter, one of Lowly's acknowledged inspirations. Like Richter,
        Lowly draws parallels and implicitly questions - the visual language
        of paint conventions versus the photographic vision, by which
        we have learned to acknowledge the world. But it Richter's photo-inspired
        paintings tend to be cool, cerebral explorations of modern perception,
        Lowly uses the effect to unusually personal, warm ends.

        

          

            

            
In the smaller, luminously
              painted view of Temma in the bath, she gazes up and away, lost
              somewhere in a parallel reality. In "Tend," an almost
              sepia-toned painting that owes directly to photographic imagery,
              a woman comforts Temma as she lies on a couch, and the image
              appears as if through double vision. A round painting finds a
              couple on the beach, with everything in crisp focus except for
              one figure whose focus is stressed to the point of looking nearly
              dematerialized.
            

              
 
          
        


        
In scenes like these, the quality and careful
        attention to painting detail appeal on one level, while, on another,
        we get a strong sense of both the fragility and strength of life
        as it's going by. With these intimate, enticingly experimental
        paintings, Lowly is dealing with something both close to home
        and universal, without any of the usual ironic tactics common
        in contemporary painting circles. This is art from the heart,
        with a probing mind attached.

        
 

        
Copyright © JosefWoodard, 2002

        
You can find more from Josef Woodard
        at http://www.joewoodard.com/.

        
 

        


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