His latest piece, Defiance, will be auctioned to benefit Western Sports Foundation
By Mira Brody VP MEDIA
If there’s one thing Lane Timothy is sure about, it’s the fact that he set out to be an artist.
“Since I was a little kid… everybody [asks], ‘What do you want to be, a fireman? I want to be a policeman. I want to be an astronaut.,”’ he said. “And I’m like, ‘I want to be an artist,'”
Timothy was born and raised in Missoula, where he sold his first painting to a neighbor for ten dollars at age seven, and was commissioning gym-wall murals for local schools by sixteen. That same year, he won the Charlie Russell National Art Scholarship, beating out seasoned painters, the youngest person ever to do so. He studied art and graphic design at the University of Montana, but left after two semesters to start his own design firm instead.
While the career paid the bills, it took time away from the medium he actually wanted to pursue. After a stretch in Salt Lake City working at a major outdoor advertising firm, a client’s offer to paint a safari mural across her spiral staircase pulled him back toward painting full time. When the firm wouldn’t allow him the time, Timothy, then 21, quit to paint full time.
His early work worked with oil paints and hyperrealism. His favorite piece from that time is called The Honeymooners, where a woman and man are packed for their honeymoon and the man is distracted. Their expressions are “people caught in the moment,” explained Timothy, something he enjoy capturing.
A sold-out debut show in Missoula led to gallery representation in Scottsdale and beyond, magazine covers, and eventually a title as the country’s top figurative artist at a Santa Barbara show. While grateful for the success in something he loved doing, the attention became a burden
“I’ve always struggled with anxiety and depression,” he said. The pressure, a divorce, and what he now recognizes as agoraphobia pushed him into a five-year retreat from painting almost entirely.
In 2009 he picked up the brush again, but on his own terms. The style was aptly described by art writer Michele Corriel for Big Sky Journal as, “hand-colored tintypes washed in memory,” on “monumentally sized canvases seem to barely hold his subjects,” often featuring the subject’s faces staring at the viewer.
His signature technique features a heavily textured surface that absorbs paint rather than holding it on top, left with raw, unstretched edges and floated in frame.
“I needed to create a style that nobody can copy and nobody can reproduce,” he said. “No one on earth is going to be able to do that.”
His subjects, featuring weathered ranch hands, working cowboys and old Western history, come from a deep respect toward both history and Western culture. A former amateur bull rider, Timothy carries a shattered shoulder and a once-severed nerve from a wreck that nearly cost him his painting arm before his art career had even started.
“I think living a hard life really adds to that grit that I put into my work,” he said. “I know what it’s like to be in a hell of a lot of pain… so I try to put some of my pain into them as well.”
Timothy’s keen instinct toward purpose extends into giving back; he donates work every year to a range of causes, including a painting that once helped a Montana mother raise enough money to find her young son a kidney donor. This summer, his contribution goes toward bull riders themselves. Big Sky PBR producer Outlaw Partners has worked with the nonprofit Western Sports Foundation to support injured riders. Timothy’s piece, Defiance, will be auctioned live on Friday, July 19 on the dirt and proceeds will go toward WSF.
“This new one is insane,” he said of the final stages of Defiance. “I’m really, really happy with it.”
“I want it to be insanely amazing,” he added. “I want it to bring as much as it can.”
The piece will anchor his Big Sky show, Angels and Outlaws, opening this summer at Courtney Collins Fine Art, a nearly 20-piece collection themed around cowboy life and Western history. The opening of that show is July 15 at 5 p.m.
As the interview wraps, Timothy mentions he’ll work more tonight; he often enjoys painting well into nighttime and the early morning hours, always chasing that flow state where he’s most comfortable.
