September 21, 2023
Please join us Thursday, September 21st, 2023 at 7pm in the Ramp Studio at 6 Prince Street for a public lecture by Dr. Timothy Standring on “The Singularity of American Watercolour, 1880 to 1990”.
Timothy James Standring is Curator Emeritus at the Denver Art Museum in Denver, Colorado. Since he initiated work there, he has striven to make art and art history accessible to a broader public and has served the museum in many capacities. Prior to his work at the Museum, Standring spent much of his career in academia. He has been a Fellow at The Clark Art Institute, a Guest Scholar at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC. He has received degrees from the University of Notre Dame (B.A.,1973), and the University of Chicago (M.A. 1975; Ph.D. 1982).
Though small in scale, Timothy James Standring’s watercolors pierce the assumed poetics the medium aspires to express. Over the past decade, Standring has brought a gimlet-eyed attention to a painterly parity of close observation and delight in his material. Deft material sensitivity and technique, both traditional and radical, register in the recurring themes he paints. Just as they resonate with Standring’s influences in a line of artists extending from Edgar Degas and John Singer Sargent to Joacuìn Sorolla and Andrew Wyeth.
His recent watercolor works reflect a preference for painting with the pigment-loaded sable belly instead of the brush’s tight point which results, surprisingly, in marks and images reminiscent of dry brush oils on unprepared paper. Such heavily pigmented watercolors enliven the poetic statements his compositions sustain. Standring conveys in his meditative observation of intimate scenes and settings a challenge to the fickle attributes that watercolor encompasses.
Standring’s works are held in numerous private collections across North American and Europe. On three occasions his works have been included in the prestigious 10 x 10 x 10 juried exhibition in Tieton, Washington. In 2022, Standring was included twice in the Coors Western Art Exhibition. His recent monographic exhibitions were reviewed by the national critic Ray Rainaldi; another was cited in Fine Art Connoisseur.
His legacy as an artist and scholar has influenced generations of artists. Many around the nation, and indeed, the world are indebted to his generous mentorship.