Tim Winters in his Stuart Town studio, The Corner Store Gallery, photograph by Madeline Young.

Studio Visit and Interview with Tim Winters

Tim Winters in a legend of the local art scene here in Orange. It was an absolute dream when Tim expressed an interest in exhibiting at The Corner Store Gallery. Ridgeway will be Tim’s first solo exhibition in 6 years since his retrospective show The Poetry of Space at the Orange Regional Gallery in 2015.

Tim is softly spoken, warm and a little shy. He is a multi-multi-disciplinary artist and his career has spanned many years, actually decades (sorry Tim, I don’t mean to make you sound old). Tim is a painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, 2D and 3D designer, and his amazing space Kinkara Studios houses a lifetime of work.

I was absolutely gobsmacked when I first visited Kinkara Studios out at Stuart town, a very scenic 45 minute drive from Orange. Tim Winters’ studio consist of an ENTIRE house. It’s the most characterful space I’ve ever visited in my life. The floor boards are completely warped and slope sideways, you can literally see through the weatherboard walls and every room is painted a different colour from minty green and red to pink. Walls have been removed to open the space up and bring light in. But it’s still cosy with a sitting room and kitchen complete with fireplace. Out the back of the house is a fully decked out print studio complete with two printing presses, a dream for any printmakers out there!

Tim showed me around while I stared, mouth agape at his many artworks, projects, materials, facilities and collector’s items. I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to visit and get to know a little more about his practice. Read on to find out more about Tim’s new exhibition Ridgeway.

Ridgeway is on display from May 19th to 29th at The Corner Store Gallery with the Opening Night Celebration on May 19th from 6pm, everyone is welcome! Exhibition to be opened by Margarete Lamond. Pre-sales launch online at 8pm May 18th.

Tell us a little about your background for those who aren't familiar with your work.

Initially I studied visual arts, then design, then visual arts again - eventually the two become inseparable, both creatively and intellectually.

Introductory Art at Hornsey School of Art, London; Interior Design at the National Art School, Sydney, and Drawing Master Classes at Sydney College of the Arts.

Your new body of work RIDGEWAY is based on a special place in Britain. Can you tell us where that place is a why it's so significant?

The Ridgeway is one of the ancient roads criss-crossing Britain. Probably the most well-known 'objects' related to the road are Stonehenge and the White Horse of Uffington (which can be glimpsed in two of the paintings). One day we went for a walk to the White Horse and the nearby, and much less known, Weyland's Smithy... About six months later, on my return to Australia I did half a dozen scratchy sketches in pen and ink, thinking that I might do some post cards... Then I put them aside for another six months or so... By that time, I'd resolved some of the visual elements (in my head) - the colour palette and some of the basic forms. At the time of visiting, it had no real significance, as such, but it certainly stuck in my subconscious... So, then, I had to do something about it.

You've had a long and very successful career as an artist and designer. Can you tell us how your work has evolved and developed into the style we see today?

It's a particularly challenging question to answer! I treat each body of art/design as a 'project'. I think this allows me some freedom of interpretation. My design training allows me to evaluate the work on an intellectual level, and my art training allows me evaluate the work on an emotional level. This gives me a degree visual flexibility.So, maybe, the style you see today may not be the style you see tomorrow!

Tell us about your material and colour choices.

Firstly, I should mention that Weyland's Smithy is underground, so that idea has to be incorporated somehow. In terms of materials, it comes down to my design training and using gouache on paper - I loved the flatness and colour density, and still do... The paintings are tinged with summer dusk, but I'm really interested in visual contrast and the emotional content of colour...

Your studio is AMAZING! Describe it to our readers and tell us how you came to be the proud owner of such an amazing space.

Kinkara Studios is my eighth studio... It started life as a one room timber cottage, and grew in to a fourteen-room house, incorporating a general store and petrol station, and at its peak, housed eleven children and five adults. Now, a few of its walls have been knocked out, to liberate some of the space...it is still a rambling and somewhat ramshackle building; a couple of fireplaces, dark and light spaces, sloping floors, a few leaks, no hot running water... we bought it from our neighbours (so that was handy) and they love what we have done (because we love the building, as they did...) In practical terms it is now a print studio, a painting studio and a design studio, and, in impractical terms, it is freezing in winter and very hot in summer...