Art Resources Gallery

Tim Harding

"I want to create objects that reflect small moments of raw beauty in the natural world."

~Tim Harding

 Tim Harding is a Minnesota artist with a career spanning almost 50 years. He is an internationally renowned fiber artist and uses silk and a complex layering technique to "paint" with fabric resulting in unique wall hangings. We have had the pleasure of working with him on numerous projects throughout the years. Please enjoy our recent conversation with him!

Can you tell us what drew you to work with fiber as your source of inspiration? As I was painting in art school, I stretched my own canvases, began shaping them, and then cutting them into pieces which I reassembled. I realized I was more interested in the canvas than the paint. I was fascinated with its intrinsic physical properties: the tactile nature, the woven grid, the pliable plane, and the deeply ingrained cultural connection to our everyday lives. There was an intimacy here that painting did not readily have. I do feel my work is still very painterly, so that was not rejected, just redirected. 

My late wife and long-time collaborator, Kathy, gave me a deep appreciation of textiles, taught me to sew, and inspired me by example to create in a much more intuitive way. This career I’ve had would not have been possible without her influence.

It has been wonderful to see your work evolve over the years. We have seen you experiment with new materials and formats that push the boundaries of fiber art. Has there ever been another medium you have wanted to explore? In art school for my fine arts major, painting was my primary emphasis. I also did some photography and silk screen printing. Techniques from these mediums have reappeared in my work periodically. Just in the last several years photography has re-emerged in my work interpreted into textile art. I’ve been actively making photographs destined for this Photo Montage Series for the last several months.

What has been one of your favorite pieces that you have created and why? Where is this piece now? I did a silk piece, Cloud Wave Kimono, about 28 years ago that paid homage to the Japanese silk dyer/painter, Itchiku Kubota, famous for his formal landscape kimonos, which I got a chance to see in person at an art museum in DC. It’s a favorite because I felt it was successful in harmonizing painterly and textile techniques in an aesthetic object that was also a functional object. It was acquired for the permanent collection at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum in DC. 

If you could recreate a famous painting using silk, what painting would that be? I have been inspired by the work of Hilma af Klindt, Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly, David Hockney, Chuck Close, and Jennifer Bartlett. I have paid homage to each of these influential artists in my work at various times throughout my almost 50-year career.

There’s no single painting I’d want to reproduce, except maybe a Monet Water Lilies, because of the significant impressionist movement from representation towards abstraction - where the brushstrokes are as much the content as the pond surface.