BIO

Timothy Gaewsky was born in Cleveland, Ohio, where he currently lives and works. He earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a BFA from The Cleveland Institute of Art. He has exhibited in many U.S. cities, including New York, Seattle, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Miami, Minneapolis, Cleveland, as well as exhibited internationally in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His work has appeared in art and literary publications such as DIALOGIST (Vol. IV, Issue I, 2017) and Eclipse Literary Magazine (2015). He was also awarded an Individual Excellence Award grant from the Ohio Arts Council in 2015. His upcoming solo exhibition at the Ella Sharp Museum (Jackson, MI) opens in March 2019. Timothy’s paintings are inspired by a personal nostalgia for 8-bit and 16-bit video games that he played while growing up in the 1980’s and early ’90’s. Video game assets that constitute gaming environments are significant source material for his compositions. In the process of playing an array of Nintendo NES and Super Nintendo games, Timothy selects, digitizes, and layers these visual assets using Photoshop to construct an amalgamated and modified gaming environment. This template is then transferred onto the painting surface and becomes a point of departure, allowing for the transformative creative process to take place at the easel. While these new hybrid landscapes become settings for his own developing narratives, some visual elements may appear familiar and the original game source identifiable, inciting a quasi-nostalgic experience for viewers who might have enjoyed playing these games from that era. More of Gaewsky's work can be found at timothygaewsky.com.