Tim Weldon

Painter, Poet, Musician, Dancer, Innovator

Tim Weldon

Artistic Statement:

A Little Better…Hum a Tune

I can tell you a new story or a story that has already been told with a more recent remembrance…I’m a scavenger for visual art.

Since I was a little boy, I loved to dance.  As it turns out, I’m still dancing.  This time, the stage is different but the passion and spontaneous freedom of expression is not.

Freed by this expression, I flirt with the contrast of texture, collage, charcoal, oil stick and multi-dimensional layers of found objects. I’m possessed by the collision of these materials and the process which plays itself out like a puppet show before my eyes. I dance between the lines of shape and color and sound and motion. If you listen close enough, you can hear the past and even peek into the ever-changing world of my mind.

Although, I am a merely the puppet in this show, I chronicle these rescued objects through the thawed images that dance through my curiosity. I’ve been awakened by my curiosity, transmitted with exuberance and have a belief that anything is possible. These images are a gentle reminder of a simpler time when everything seemed possible and dreams were in Technicolor. While channeling Rauschenberg, Nevelson, Klee, Basquiat, Dubuffet and a host of others, the communication between these dreams, the objects and their inhabitants take another route or a more unconventional direction to the same ultimate destination...my creative wanderings.

Conventionally, paintings are normally displayed squared or rectangular. In this case, most of the time, these paintings or sculptural wall hangings, are not. Life is not square or rectangular, at least not in my mind. Life is full of surprises and if so welcomed, can be quite poetic. Being a self-taught artist has helped me explore this poetry through my work. While working, the main thing I search for is balance and the composition takes care of itself. Instead of using paint, now the color has to come from the ingredients that I use…old advertising signs, barn doors, vintage sheet music, scrap wood and metals, toys and just about anything most would call junk. Like I said, I’m a scavenger for visual art.

As I balance the high wire act between my creative wanderings, the business art world, my family life (which is truly inspiring), and my extreme delight in “playing”, I’ve been permanently stained by these particular musings. They’ve put the soul back in me. They keep me grounded, yet still allow me to navigate recklessly through this maze of juxtaposition.

With titles like,

Tapdance…The DJ Saved My Soul,

Tell Me a Story,

Play Here,

There’s A Coffee Stain On My Picture,

The Big Whistle,

EAT!,

Womb Stereo

and

Pops Soul Dance Theater,

My exaggerated focus on crumbling architecture, hobos on trains playing blues music, pre-1960’s America, spiritual artifacts and the vivid colors of my everyday,  have finally come to life

The Big Whistle, “Whistleman” or “El”, as I like to call him, still has something to say. It’s now the viewer’s responsibility to decipher his message.

These assemblages are a more accurate look into my life of art, music and dance. I’m still searching for balance but at the same time still dancing and everything is just a little better because of it.

Gallerist Review:

An imaginative painter, Weldon practices what might be called “a carnival of folkloric figuration.” Weldon’s works are created with “DUENDE”, an inspired power of scorching passion laden with poetic verse that swirls through the composition like a cool breeze and leaves the viewer with feelings of déjà vu.

As a self-taught artist, Weldon’s body of work reveals a rich variety of themes and stylistic approaches, all facilitating a fertile arena of development.

Representing the confrontation of reality, Weldon’s paintings burst with energy and blazing color which culminate in an absolute celebration of life. Just as an illustrated fable provokes an emotion, each painting by Weldon invokes the color of life.

His surfaces are coated with thickly worked pigment mixed with sand and other materials to build layers of emotional texture. Then an assortment of rescued objects, like buttons, keys, sheet music, newsprint, old records and musical instruments are playfully choreographed, and inserted as metaphors to the dialogue and cast of characters thus defining each surface in terms of the centralized figure-ground and poetic relationship. With titles like, Rattlebone, Junkyard Melody and Jook House…his works hark back to southern folkloric themes from such 20th century artists like, Bill Traylor, to whom he clearly acknowledges a debt.

As an artist at mid-career, Weldon relentlessly moves forward, always “pushing the envelope” a little further with his experimental use of media.

Weldon presents subjects that stir the emotional well within our consciousness,which in turn invites the viewer to partake on the journey between the lyrically charged depth of life’s nuances and the dynamic expressiveness of desire.

In the end, this creation all germinates in a new freedom of composition.

Widely regarded as “unconventional” or “outsider” in nature, Weldon’s message is global and grounded in contemporary themes. The viewer can only fondly smile as Weldon wanders, artistically speaking, across the gamut of an emotional rainbow.

- Paul E. Meyers, Step Gallery, New York