Timothy Traver works across painting, bookmaking, sculpture, and collage, using his artistic practice to build imagined worlds. Being deeply interested in materiality and alternative approaches to mark-making, Traver has used a wide range of media over the years. “I have painted with my mouth, feet, left hand, feathers, sticks, bike tires, pop cans, and a little bit of everything, probably,” he says.
Among other things, his work is an ongoing exploration of color. Figures are defined by their rainbow outlines and multicolor, branch-like appendages. Recent drawings and paintings feature two-headed fauna, kaleidoscopic landscapes, and technicolor trees, their subjects drawn in thick marker over fields of blue, orange, and pink. In his wearable fiber works, Traver often screenprints the subjects from his paintings onto garments that he tie-dyes by hand.
Traver has presented work in exhibitions throughout the Twin Cities since 2002, more recently including We Are Not Disposable(2020), Randomlandat The White Page (2019), Groundswell at Artspace Jackson Flats (2019), Etcetera at CanCan Wonderland (2017), and Ecosystems at The Show Gallery (2015). In 2006, with support from Interact, he self-published Timmy the Tree Clown, an illustrated book about his alter ego. In 1998 he received an Emerging Artist Grant from VSA Minnesota.
Special thanks to Xavier Tavera for this portrait of the artist.
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