TIM SOUTHALL

Tim Southall was born in Staffordshire and grew up on the edge of the heavy industrial heartlands of the Black Country. He studied Fine Art at Northumbria University and then printmaking at the Royal College of Art and l’école des beaux art, Paris. For the last 22 years he has been based on the Atlantic coast in Cadiz Province in southern Spain. He makes work that draws heavily on his imagination to create witty narrative etchings and silkscreen prints. He also makes works that reflect his location in the form of evocative coastal monotypes.

Tim’s work is figurative and generally uses a narrative framework to explore themes of commonality, often with a strong character and emotional base. He plays with metaphors, scale and perspective, and creating images that at first seem intrinsically simple, but on closer inspection are quite profound. His creative process is everyday life. He acts like a sponge, soaking up the nuances of character and behaviour that he sees in others and also within himself. He often reaches back into his childhood experiences to reference a distant self in a quest to find meaning in what he sees here today. This ‘distance’ offers a linear route of his life experience; from birth through to death and everything in between. Over the forty three years since first making a print, the process has continued to intrigue and beguile him. He takes great joy in finding new approaches to the medium, setting himself harder goals, creating paths of greater difficulty, and triumphing over his inevitable failures. In the end, all that really matters to him is that the viewer has the opportunity to find their own meaning and value in the art that he makes.

Tim has pursued an active exhibition program for almost 40 years.

Here are a selection of various key solo and group exhibitions:

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2011/13/18/22/23

National Original Print Exhibition, Bankside Gallery, 2015/16/17

'Lyrical Notes' 2 person exhibition at the Barbican Library

'Scenes in Print' New Ashgate Gallery, Farnham

Master Printmakers: screenprint, Craft Centre Leeds

Etching: The Masters, Bankside Gallery, London

Royal West of England Annual Open, Bristol

The Discerning Eye, The Mall Galleries, London

The Royal Society of British Artists, The Mall Galleries

‘Master Etchers’ The White Room, Bath