Timothy Watters‘ paintings will be displayed at Bang Gallery in downtown LA, 354 S Spring Street on Friday, July 23rd 2010.
Timothy Watters in his studio/garage
Getting to Timothy Watter’s house requires traversing some of the steepest mountain roads in Eagle Rock, that industrial-straddling burb of northern Los Angeles. It’s reminiscent of the sort of rare air that some artists seek, and which few have the misfortune of finding–art that straddles the edge of contemporary, seldom understood by the masses, inaccessible outside of the artist’s constantly furrowed brow. It’s even called “high” art (note: not related to 420 art).
In other words, ever read any Gertrude Stein? I did, and even as an English major in college, it was enough to push me back to Harry Potter for a while. When I meet Tim, I get the sense that he wouldn’t mind becoming the J. K. Rowling of painters–or perhaps the Jay-Z, who started out making politically charged ‘message rap,’ before blowing up the mainstream by appealing to an ever-broader audience (say, the state of New York).
“That’s what I learned from Jay-Z,” Watters explains, “is that you gotta get in the game, make it, then change it.”
