Tim Steward

Tim will be exhibiting with us at the Affordable Art Fair, Battersea, London this Spring 25

12 - 16 March. Join Tim on our Stand: C4 over this weekend

Please click on this link for your complimentary tickets 

We are thrilled that Tim is in the process of creating new Cornish paintings especially for the fair, these will be added as and when to this page. 

These are available only through the gallery, please contact us if you wish to have prior notice of, purchase or have any more information on these beautiful artworks.

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh | Gift from the Sea

Tim Steward is driven by an immutable desire to study, digest and record. Often using whatever mark-making device is to hand, Tim offers his viewer the opportunity to see the places he sees. It takes dedication to mentally transport oneself from space to place, but to share the experience with others – regardless of whether they’ve physically visited the location in question – is no mean feat.

He explores the beauty of ‘place’, through study of the physical, historical and spiritual elements which characterise it, and by recording it’s ever-changing nature over time. He now concentrates on the area around Tregardock, a National Trust owned area of North Cornwall. He has felt a connection with this area since early childhood, stating that he feels a sense of aliveness there and that it has given this work a ‘renewed sense of freedom’, allowing him to work much more from a place of ‘instinct’. Over the past few years, he has spent time becoming immersed in the landscape there, at times physically sitting in the mud, in addition to exploring the history and story of the place. 

Steward says of his work, “There is something very humbling about being alone in such a vast landscape, and in truth everything in me can pull away when the weather is stormy, such is the intensity of the place. Still though I know I must feel the Earth beneath me and the elements around me. As I emerge out the other side this last few years, Tregardock has become a wonderful place of solace, despite its fierceness at times.” This deep connection to the wildness of the sculpted environment of North Cornwall which goes back to his childhood. The sharp angular shapes of the cliffs in the morning light a reminder of the dramatic black and white architectural views which dominated his early career.  As with all his subject matters, his focus has taken him on a journey where through repetitive study he will see and feel things differently over time and record this evolving process; searching, seeking and expressing that which can pass in a moment. 

Tim has honed an artistic voice filled with raw, energetic mark-making and a deep emotional connection to place. Tim’s choice of traditional mediums such as pastel, charcoal, pigment and oil, as well as found materials, such as charred wood, clay mud and sand, mirror his direct and instinctual way of working. Combining measured observation with working spontaneously at speed is at the heart of his painting and drawing technique.Inspired by the experimental focus of the likes of Boudin and Degas, Tim’s work is grounded in a classical approach. The stripped back and sometimes unconventional nature of his working methods, applying medium with his hands, throwing pigment onto paper, and applying found materials are part of a bold and visceral manner of working. He tirelessly surveys Tregardock Beach and the changing Atlantic coast; the beach itself only revealed at low tide.

Surveying is the operative word here.

For Tim initially studied Town and Country Planning at Cardiff University, before rerouting toward fine art. The two come together in the artist’s practice today, his knowledge and interest in urban design and building conservation feed into his drawing process, particularly in his Oxford series. The artist tells us his next challenge is to combine his Tregardock work with his love of capturing geometric details. Places of focus have included Radcliffe Square in Oxford, St Pauls and Westminster in London, the Colosseum in Rome, and more recently the Oxfordshire countryside and the North Cornwall coastline near Port Isaac.  

 “It was always in my mind that I would work outside – in nature. It was not however my imagining that this would be as an artist. Growing up in the Chilterns I developed a love of the outdoors. I remember clearly, digesting a book called Faith in the Countryside by the Archbishop's Commission on Rural Areas, which made a real impression on me. It read as a vision for sustainable communities of the future, built on some of the wonderful vestiges of the past.”

The shift in focus from old buildings to towering cliffs was a natural progression for Tim and one that has allowed much room for experimentation. “Integral to this phase of work has been learning – both of what I am drawing, the plants and their seasonality, and also the external forces that affect my work: the tides, the changing light, where the sun rises and sets, and the history of the place.”It’s through observations of everyday minutiae that Tim “naturally resonate[s] with the rhythms and preciousness of nature; small but important reminders of its vulnerability and its force …and the need above all to respect it…

“Sometimes I’ve not even got down to the beach, but found myself entangled in the hedgerows, studying the plants, or trying to capture the colour of the sky from our lodgings. These moments recorded, no matter how roughly, nearly always become something, and over time they form the very marrow of my work.”

Living and drawing in this part of Cornwall has only enhanced my love of the outdoors. Nature is so tangible here it becomes a part of you.” And you can most definitely feel this connection between artist and subject. Of all Tim’s work, his Tregardock series speaks to us the most, though we’re unable to grasp exactly why.

Of course, the artist’s process helps us to immerse ourselves in the series. The fact that he uses twigs, seawater, mud, clay, raw pigment… but there’s something more than that too, something intangible. Maybe it’s the artist’s need to get himself in the right – near meditative – mindset before embarking. Maybe it’s the constant changing of the weather’s mood, or the boundaries imposed by the tide. Maybe it’s the interaction of the elements with the work itself.

Film by Paul Lewis.