“Beyond this revived metaphor, my devotion to the aesthetics of precision remains paramount, along with the creation of pictorial space through light and measure. This signals for me the constructed reality of a painting and simultaneously its potential for transformation. The beauty of this continuing endeavor, despite any conceits I might harbor to the contrary, is that I never really know what will transpire in a given work. Visual dynamics of all sorts can and do unfold as I pursue what might seem a narrow path. Although I begin with a general plan, the given variables shift and change in subtle and unpredictable ways as I proceed toward a resolution.” - Timothy App
Over the last five decades, Contemporary American painter Timothy App [B. 1947 Akron, OH; Lives and works in Baltimore, MD] has developed a body of work that engages a complex exploration of abstract painting and has contribution to the larger art historical narrative around geometric practice. App's signature style of geometric abstraction, with its assertive visual tensions, reveals a concise and thoughtful understanding of the nature of painting, demonstrating his status as one of the region's most important living painters.
Timothy App received a BFA in 1970 from Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, and an MFA in 1974 from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. He was an Assistant Professor of Art at Pomona College in Claremont, CA from 1974- 78, an Associate Professor of Art at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM from 1978-90, and has been a Professor of Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD since 1990 until his retirement in 2019.
App’s many awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Grants, Trustee’s Award for Excellence in Teaching at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and nomination for the Richard C. Diebenkorn Fellowship.
Since the 1970 App’s work has been widely exhibited throughout the USA as well as in Poland and Japan. He has been featured in myriad solo exhibitions and included in over 200 group exhibitions. App’s work appears in numerous private, public, and corporate collections, including: the Albright-Knox Art Museum in Buffalo, NY; the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; the Long Beach Museum of Art in Long Beach, CA; the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, NM; Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, NM; the Tucson Museum of Art in Tucson, AZ; ArtCloud, Korea; The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; among many others.
The artist explains: “Among the recurring thematic forms in my work is the portal—the liminal barrier that entreats passage from one place to another, from one state to another. This construction, which requires bi-lateral symmetry for its visual power and anthropometric presence, has been summoned before in my work. The metaphysical implications of this compelling form continue to haunt my thinking about painting.”