Artist Statement
My paintings combine still lifes of objects with images from art history. I work from life, arranging the elements over a period of days and doing drawings until I have a composition that can sustain a painting. I enjoy the challenge of painting from life, especially when it includes creating a reasonable copy of a painting by one of my favorite artists, such as Van Eyck or Giotto. I paint in transparent watercolor, using an archival board that is primed for watermedia, which allows greater control and flexibility, and can be varnished like an oil painting.
There is generally no explicit relationship between the still life elements and the artworks included in my paintings. The artworks are chosen because of their subject matter, their colors and composition, or simply on impulse, reproduced from books and postcards and redrawn by hand. The fruit and vegetables come straight from the grocery store, also chosen for their colors and forms. I sometimes include the bar code stickers to emphasize that they are consumer products. I don’t look for an explicit connection or “message” in the combination of elements. Instead, I want to create a painting in which several “realities” coexist—the reality of the table top joined with the pictorial space and subject matter of the artwork. I want the painting to be believable but also clearly a fabrication, a painted image within a painted image and a horizontal tabletop and vertical backdrop reduced to two dimensions. Most of the artworks I use have an inherent geometry, which I incorporate into the overall composition and space of the painting. I enjoy using works by artists who celebrated the potential of paint to describe the richness of the visual world— Ingres for example—as well as artists such as Matisse and Picasso who explored the contradictions of the flat picture plane and the painted illusion.
In today’s world, painting is an antique art form. Its function as the leading vehicle of visual culture has been eclipsed by photography, film, and digital imagery. But painting remains an amazingly expressive medium, capable since prehistoric times of giving inert minerals the ability to encapsulate human experience and emotion. Sitting in my studio, I have all of art history at my disposal online and on my bookshelf. At the same time, I look at the shifting light outside my window, and at the way it illuminates the table in front of me. What if I did a painting that combined the two?
Click here to hear Tim Schiffer in conversation with Susan Watts and Alyss Vernon of Olson Larsen Galleries in West Des Moines, Iowa: https://youtu.be/35m6oUvJhJ8
About the Artist
Tim Schiffer was raised on a ranch in northern Wyoming. His interest in art was encouraged by his mother, who studied at the Art Students League in New York, and who introduced him to watercolors. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy, and studied for a year in Rennes, France. He received his BA in art from Yale, and attended the Yale Summer School of Music and Art in Norfolk, Connecticut. He earned his MFA in painting from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where for eight years he was a Lecturer in Art and Gallery Director at the College of Creative Studies, an independent undergraduate program within the university. In 1993 he was named Curator at the Museum of Ventura County in Ventura, California, and went on to serve as Executive Director from 1999 to 2012. In 2012 he joined the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, as Executive Director, retiring in 2019. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Tim Schiffer
Education
B.A., Yale College, 1977, summa cum laude, Honors in Fine Art
M.F.A., University of California, Santa Barbara, 1992, Regents University Fellowship
Selected Exhibitions
Beréskin Gallery, Bettendorf IA 2021
Olson-Larsen Galleries, West Des Moines IA, 2020
Quad City Arts, Rock Island IL, 2019
University Art Museum, UC Santa Barbara, 1992
Tatischeff Rogers Gallery, Santa Monica CA, 1989
College of Creative Studies, UC Santa Barbara, 1988
Professional Experience
Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa
Executive Director, 2012-2019
Museum of Ventura County, Ventura, California
Executive Director, 1999-2012
Curator, 1993-1999
Santa Barbara City College
Instructor in Art, 1992-1993
Kenneth Noland Studio, Carpinteria, California
Manager, 1988-1990
College of Creative Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
Lecturer in Art and Gallery Director, 1980-1988
Related Experience
Member Emeritus, Association of Art Museum Directors
Grant Panelist, National Endowment for the Arts
Board Member, Downtown Davenport Partnership
Board Member, Davenport Rotary Club
Instructor, Western Illinois University Museum Studies Program
Trustee and Audit Chair, Ganna Walska Lotusland, Santa Barbara, CA
Board Member, Ventura Visitors & Convention Bureau
Steering Committee, ArtsLIVE Ventura County
Steering Committee, City of Ventura Cultural Plan Task Force
Board Member and Exhibition Chair, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum
Steering Committee, Santa Barbara High School Madrigals Tours, 2003-2010
Art Reviewer, Santa Barbara Independent, 1992-1994
Honors and Awards
Mayor’s Arts Award, Arts Leader of the Year, Ventura, CA 2011
Leadership Advancement Grant, James Irvine Foundation, 2005-2006
Paul Harris Fellow, Rotary Club of Ventura, 2001
Phi Beta Kappa, 1977
Fellowship, Yale Summer School of Music & Art, Norfolk, CT, 1976
Selected Publications
William L. Hawkins: An Imaginative Geography, Introduction, 2018
Figge Art Museum Handbook, Project Manager, 2015
Nature's Palette: Meredith Brooks Abbott, Exhibition Catalog, Museum of Ventura County, 2010
Otto Heino: An Appreciation in The Art of Vivika & Otto Heino, Ventura County Museum of History & Art and Craft & Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, 2005
George Stuart Historical Figures, Catalog Essay, Ventura County Museum of History & Art, 2005
Foreword, The Santa Clara Valley of Ventura County, Santa Barbara: Easton Gallery, 2002
Assembly of the Arts Invitational: Ventura County Photographers, Exhibition Catalog, Ventura County Museum of History & Art, 1996
“Landscapes of Conscience: Ray Strong,” Santa Barbara Magazine, Winter, 1996
The Ceramic Art of Vivika and Otto Heino, Exhibition Catalog, Ventura County Museum of History & Art, 1995
Meditations on Time and Place: The Art of John Comer, Catalog Essay, George Stern Fine Arts, Los Angeles, 1993