Timothy Kranz
Kendall College of Art and Design
How contemporary and modern art differ
Oil on panel
20" x 22"
When I was younger, I loved to draw but I wanted nothing to do with painting until I had to take it as an art credit in my first year of college. I had always made art and grew up taking various art related classes throughout grade school and at the Flint Institute of Arts and yet somehow, for some reason, I avoided painting of almost any kind. I had used acrylics very sparingly on a few projects but, never did anything that could be considered a painting. In that first class, I was introduced to oil paints and the proverbial "whole new world" opened up for me. I dropped black and white media like a bad habit and embraced color and oils faster than Anakin Skywalker succumbed to the darkside of the Force.
I loved the smell, feel of applying oils to a surface, response of the paint, techniques, range, and possibilities that oils provided and I became very productive and passionate about painting. After graduating with my B.F.A., for various reasons I didn't accept offers I had received to go to graduate school, and decided to take a year off from school. One year turned into two, then three, and time kept passing until I realized that not only had I barely produced art in five years but, that it was deeply affecting me in many ways. I decided to go back to graduate school at Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids and was incredibly "rusty", making the first semester of grad school rough for me but, I knew I had to stick with it or else I would let even more time and art making opportunities get away from me.
While I was at Kendall, I developed a concept that allowed me to combine my love of art with my lifelong interests in pop culture and psychology by painting toys in ways that often cause viewers to see them as living subjects in narratives. The human tendency to anthropomorphize non-living things is our attempt to understand things by attaching motive, intent, and other human qualities to them. By painting toys in somewhat ambiguous situations, I am able to allow my viewers to psychologically interpret the actions, intentions, and reasons of the non-living subjects and meanings of my art in their own way however, the subjects of my paintings never had feelings or lives until the viewer attached them psychologically. That psychological twist interests me and motivates me to find new ways to make art that means something to me but ultimately is created by the viewer. As an art instructor at the University of Michigan-Flint, I try to encourage and inspire my students to find subjects and concepts in art that give them the most satisfaction, in turn satisfying myself almost as deeply as when I create my own art.