Mr Timms
Oil on canvas
102 cm x 51,5 cm
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Mr. Timms is a deeply personal painting that reflects the way I relate to memory, nostalgia, and the emotional residue of my past. I’ve always had a habit of holding onto things: objects, images, feelings, long after their time has passed. There’s a comfort in that, but also a heaviness. This work comes from that space of emotional hoarding: the parts of myself I can’t quite let go of, the moments I replay, both good and bad, and the fixation that forms around them. The painting was inspired by the cover of Rango, one of my favourite animated films growing up. I remember being drawn to the oddness of the characters, the warmth of the colours, and the strange melancholy that sits just beneath the surface of the movie. I chose to reference that specific image of Rango holding Mr. Timms because even in the film, Mr. Timms represents something from Rango’s past, something small and strange that he can’t quite part with. That resonated with me. In painting myself in Rango’s place, holding Mr. Timms, I’m confronting my own tendency to grip the past tightly, sometimes to my own detriment.
I chose to work in a limited, monochromatic palette of pink and blue as a way to reflect my emotional fixation. Monochrome, for me, becomes a form of repetition, a visual loop, mimicking the way certain memories play over and over in my mind. The restricted palette creates a kind of intensity, as though I’m pressing in on one emotion, one moment, obsessively. The pinks, used for my skin, suggest vulnerability and exposure, while the blue used for Mr. Timms and layered throughout the background symbolises a colder, distant emotional undercurrent. The two colours are in constant dialogue, but never quite merge, just as the past and present sit closely together but remain separate.
There are areas of the painting that are deliberately left unfinished, especially around the clothing. This was important for me. Memory is not always whole. Some things are vivid, detailed, painfully sharp. Others are hazy, half-formed, lost. Sometimes what we cling to changes shape over time, and in doing so, we become less complete ourselves, defined as much by what’s missing as what remains. The incompleteness in the work is a way of honouring that reality.
Mr. Timms is more than a nostalgic reference. It’s about who I’ve been, who I am, and how the past lingers in between. It’s a visual reflection on what it means to remember, to hold on, and to wonder what it might feel like — or who I might be — if I ever truly let go.