Tim McFarlane on DoNArTNeWs

Tim McFarlane, Bridgette Mayer Gallery

Don Brewer, Philadelphia-based artist and art blogger has posted a great article on his blog featuring my show and my words in conversation with gallery visitors on September 14th, 2013.

I was in the gallery that day from 11am-2pm to make myself available to talk informally with gallery visitors about the show. I repeated the experience this past Saturday, September 28th from 2-5pm.

Gallery Appearance tomorrow!

Tim McFarlane, "Presence", entry view, September 2013

(photo: Karen Mauch Photography)

Tim McFarlane, "Presence", rear gallery view, September 2013

(photo: Karen Mauch Photography)

Just a reminder that I will be at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery tomorrow afternoon (Sat. 9.28.13), from 2-5pm and available to answer questions and have informal conversations about the work in my exhibition "Presence". The exhibition closes on October 5th.

Tim McFarlane at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery
Saturday, September 28, 2013
2-5pm

Bridgette Mayer Gallery
709 Walnut Street, 1st Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19106
215.413.8893
www.bridgettemayergallery.com

"Presence" exhibition updates and gallery appearance news...

We Dance to Pray, 2013, acrylic on drywall, 9 x 13 feet

"Presence" exhibition updates...

We are past the half-way mark for the show and things have been going really well. "We Dance to Pray", my site-specific painting installation has been a favorite among visitors to the exhibition and as a reminder, the you have until October 5th to experience it. Once the show is over, WDTP will only be seen in reproduction form.

"In his first solo show in the new space, he has managed what many artists before him have not been able to do - find the right balance and scale of works for the hallway and then make the most of that huge back wall...McFarlane's enormous site-specific painting, We Dance to Pray, on the back wall is the most exciting, visceral use of this wall to date, allowing viewers the sensation of walking into the painting."

-Edith Newhall, (Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, September 8, 2013)

Gallery appearance! 
This coming Saturday, September 28, 2013, I will be making myself available to visitors of the show to talk about the work. If you're in the area, stop in between 2-5pm to see the show, say 'hi', and chat a bit.

Tim McFarlane at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery 
Saturday, September 28, 2013
2-5pm

Bridgette Mayer Gallery
709 Walnut Street, 1st Floor
Philadelphia, PA, 19106
www.bridgettemayergallery.com
215.413.8893

"We Dance to Pray"

We Dance to Pray, 2013, acrylic on drywall, approx. 9 x 13 feet

(photo: Karen Mauch Photography)

I'm just getting around to posting a good, full image of We Dance to Pray, my painting installation that is part of my current exhibition at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery, "Presence", and here it is. This is certainly one of my favorite pieces to have worked on, so far. To have the freedom to paint what I wanted directly on the wall at the gallery was a very liberating thing. I did a similar piece back in 2009-"This Moment" (a small partial image can be seen on the right hand sidebar of this blog),  but WDTP goes beyond the previous one in man aspects, but I just feel that it's a better painting.

Below is my statement for We Dance to Pray:

The studio is rarely silent when I’m working. Music fills the space from the moment I walk in and doesn’t end until I leave for the day. I listen a wide range of music, but the genre of House (and various sub-genres) dominate my studio listening most of the time.  When I was preparing a list of materials for this painting installation, the first thing on it was “iPod dock”-not brushes, not paints, but the music. It’s that important.

During the second day of working on “We Dance to Pray”, Bridgette asked me if I had a title for the piece and I said that I didn’t. I almost never choose titles before I complete a piece. However, the question did trigger the naming process and before I was finished, the painting had a title. “We Dance to Pray” is a lyric from a house tune that I don’t remember the name of, but it stuck with me as I navigated the layers of this piece and remained strong even as I completed the painting.

“We Dance to Pray” isn’t a direct interpretation of music. However, the overall sense of the painting feels musical. The underlying structures form a basic beat that is changed and multiplied in the three sections of the top layer. We Dance to Pray as a title suggests the ecstatic, near-religious experiences that some forms of dancing can enhance, and is particularly resonant in much of house music, especially in soulful, vocal house. Vocal house links directly to the musical traditions of the black church with its joyful exuberance, uplifting tempos and positive outlook. House is like the secular version of religious music, only more outwardly sensual in its embrace of life. Instead of a church, house brings us to the dance floor, where we dance to release the demons of a stressful life, let ourselves go and offer up thanks the release. We dance to pray.

Tim McFarlane

August 2013

'Presence' takes off!

I'm trying to catch up with various things after having a great opening reception for my current exhibition, "Presence",  at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery last Friday (9.06.13). It was a great night with me catching up with friends, colleagues, collectors, and others.

The opening was followed up by a wonderfully complimentary review in the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer by Edith Newhall. You can read the review online here: "Settling in at Bridgette Mayer"

The full text is below:

"Settling in at Bridgette Mayer"
By Edith Newhall (Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday September 9, 2013)

"It's been fascinating to see how artists have responded to the Bridgette Mayer Gallery's redesigned space since its official reopening in November 2011 - in particular, the ways in which the gallery's "old guard" have rethought their former quarters when having their first solo shows in the "new" space.

It's the same historic building, of course, but it now has one very long wall running along a somewhat narrow hallway, and one huge, spectacular one in the back that literally draws gallery visitors like a giant magnet. The new iteration is also as polished and professional as it used to be cozy and relaxed.

Surprisingly, though, considering they might have been intimidated by their new digs, all of the longstanding gallery artists who've had one-person shows at Mayer since 2011 have risen to the challenge, none more so than Tim McFarlane. In his first solo show in the new space, he has managed what many artists before him have not been able to do - find the right balance and scale of works for the hallway and then make the most of that huge back wall.

With "Presence," McFarlane has also created one of his most cohesive bodies of work to date; the small paintings displayed in the front room and along the hallway announce that right away. In each, energetically painted gestural lines form netlike compositions that coalesce with varying background colors, conjuring different places and experiences, musical rhythms, and McFarlane's own riff on the physical act of painting.

So many paintings of the same size need not have been hung so close together - a strategy that's been employed in other shows here to take advantage of the long wall but that tends to undermine the individuality of works - but the paintings across from them are varied in scale and color and more anomalous in this show, such as his bucolic, lovely Vortex, which combines a gestural composition with an inner open space that looks like a clearing in a forest.

McFarlane's enormous site-specific painting, We Dance to Pray, on the back wall is the most exciting, visceral use of this wall to date, allowing viewers the sensation of walking into the painting. At the same time, it is a logical progression in his show (as was Eileen Neff's photographic work on this wall in her show at this time last year), not straining to be a separate "project."

----------------------------------------------------------

Also, during the opening, Bridgette Mayer presented a check for $17,000.00 to members of non-profit dance company Ballet X, based in Philadelphia. The funds are the result of money raised during the 2013 Benefit Exhibition, held earlier this summer at the gallery. The benefit continues online until November 1st at phillyartexperience.com/art, where two of my paintings on panel can be purchased (10 x 10 inches, acrylic on panel, both completed in spring 2013. 

Last, but not least, I will be in attendance at the gallery this Saturday, September 14th, from 11am-2pm, so if you are in the area, stop by to see the show and chat a bit!

First Friday Focus: September 2013 :: Arts :: Picks :: Philadelphia City Paper

Nice mention of my new solo exhibition in the Philadelphia City Paper...

First Friday Focus: September 2013 :: Arts :: Picks :: Philadelphia City Paper: Philadelphia-based artist Tim McFarlane is part of growing group of impressive abstract painters featured at Bridgette Mayer Gallery. His pieces are made up of chunky, complicated layers that highlight shape and color in equal parts. While McFarlane’s paintings are often curvy and fantastical, his exhibit “Presence” is colder and more geometrical, in a good way. The show also includes a site-specific painting, and McFarlane said his artwork is inspired by his environment. “The masses of forms overlapping, supporting, and negating each other in my work mirror observations of everyday life,” he said in a statement, “of how people interact with each other and their surroundings, as well as how the passage of time imposes itself on the memory of experience.” Through Oct. 5, opening Fri., Sept. 6 6 p.m., 215-413- 8893.