TIM HUSSEY IN HIS OWN WORDS:
For decades I have been drawn to obscure items from the past—diary entries, school papers, government documents and receipts—dating as early as the 1700s. Through collecting these extracted bits from other people’s lives, I have discovered an age-old landscape of personal emotional patterns: self-promotion in the face of competition, uncertainty about decisions, and the overarching theme of desiring an enduring companionship. These found papers, utilitarian in nature, affirm and become visual references to the universality of the human experience, and more particularly, my personal experience.
Collage satisfies my desire to collaborate and become part of something larger. As my work has matured, I find more beauty and mystery by incorporating old papers than by filling a blank canvas with only marks and lines by my own hand. Art is a way to illustrate and explain the world before us, and I am particularly drawn to a handwritten spelling chart or a diary full of shorthand when appropriated especially into a precious and inspired context.In the past three years I have expanded on this concept of merging found writings and depictions with my own marks and drawings, and blurring the boundaries between artist and viewer. Which layers are mine? Which parts of the work were created long ago, perhaps before my great grandparents were even born? Re-appropriating these rediscovered remnants allows me to fold time in on itself and let the "artist" become secondary to the composition. Through editing the existing found materials and overlaying them with paint, I marry graphic elements and archetypal symbols, creating signature elements of ambiguity of humor. -TIM HUSSEY
Collage satisfies my desire to collaborate and become part of something larger. As my work has matured, I find more beauty and mystery by incorporating old papers than by filling a blank canvas with only marks and lines by my own hand. Art is a way to illustrate and explain the world before us, and I am particularly drawn to a handwritten spelling chart or a diary full of shorthand when appropriated especially into a precious and inspired context.In the past three years I have expanded on this concept of merging found writings and depictions with my own marks and drawings, and blurring the boundaries between artist and viewer. Which layers are mine? Which parts of the work were created long ago, perhaps before my great grandparents were even born? Re-appropriating these rediscovered remnants allows me to fold time in on itself and let the "artist" become secondary to the composition. Through editing the existing found materials and overlaying them with paint, I marry graphic elements and archetypal symbols, creating signature elements of ambiguity of humor. -TIM HUSSEY
Tim Hussey is currently exhibiting in PAST/PRESENT at Redux Contemporary Art Center Charleston, as well as pursuing a new body of work.
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