Meet the Artist: Molly Timmins, SANDERSON CONTEMPORARY
We spoke with artist Molly Timmins (Ngāpuhi, Pākehā) about her upcoming presentation with SANDERSON CONTEMPORARY at the Fair. Read on to discover more about Molly’s creative journey and what we can expect to see:
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What inspired you to pursue a career in art, and how has your journey as an artist evolved over the years?
I grew up in a creative family, and the artistic freedom I was given throughout my childhood carried me through into my schooling. It was at school I found a real interest in realistic paintings of landscapes and whenua.
During my BFA at Whitecliffe I introduced embroidery into my paintings in order to observe material hierarchies within art history. My Master’s thesis in 2023 focused on gardens, through paintings that transition between depictive and abstract approaches of botanica as well as broader ideas of what “garden” and “non-garden” can mean in a painting context.
My most recent development of research is looking at Te Pō (night) and the transition between daylight and darkness.
How do you approach the creative process when starting a new painting? Do you have any specific rituals or techniques?
When preparing to make my most recent series of artworks, which are showing at the art fair, I spent time outside sitting in my mother’s garden at nighttime. I observed the sounds and smells, as well as the colours and atmosphere as the garden transitioned from day to night.
In the studio, I refer to some photographs but I try to allow for a bodily response to the remembered atmosphere, as well as letting the paint lead some of my decision making.
Within the pieces that have both paint and embroidery, for drying reasons, I do the stitching last. This process can be quite different to my painting approach, and it slows down the pacing of the work.
Image: Molly’s research photograph
What drew you to explore gardens as both a physical space and an artistic subject?
My mother and her mother both owned bromeliad businesses while being passionate gardeners. Growing up surrounded by plants is what inspired me to honour this lineage, and I look to my own Māori (Ngāpuhi) whakapapa alongside my heritage to colonial gardens, to consider a nuanced approach to gardens as an environment.
I’m equally as interested in what gardens can represent, and speak about, within the broader framework of Aotearoa. I aim to paint in a way that observes the hierarchies within these physical environments, as well as the idea of “garden” and “non-garden” and how this may translate through both the physical paint and how different modes of brushwork may fit or contrast within garden- painting history.
Image: Her mother’s bromeliads
What can we expect to see at your presentation at the Fair with SANDERSON?
At the Art Fair, I will be presenting a mixture of paintings and embroideries that explore nocturnal gardens. This is through a mixture of observational or botanical moments, and abstract mark-making. The combination of stitching and paint aims to observe the histories and hierarchies carried within the materials, and considers the relationship and metaphors between painting, embroidering, and gardening. A cooler, blue-toned palette is carried throughout these artworks, which feature abstract and gestural responses to the contextual research of gardening and painting history within Aotearoa.
What have been your career highlights to date?
Creating 3-metre long paintings for my Master’s graduate show in 2023 was an exciting experience, which I gratefully showed with Sanderson last year in my show Rewilding the Garden. Over the last 4 years, I have worked as an arts educator at Corban Estate Arts Centre. Making art with thousands of tamariki has been an incredibly rewarding experience, and the kaupapa of this mahi enriches both my studio ethic and my paintings. I’m also very grateful to have received early-career funding from Creative New Zealand last year, which has helped towards studio costs for my solo show at Sanderson later in the year, as well as other projects worked on during this time, including the work shown in the Aotearoa Art Fair.
Image credit: Molly Timmins
How do you imagine yourself, your practice, to look in 10 years time?
Big question! I hope that my paintings evolve into new territories while I’m developing my research. I want to keep an element of freshness towards new ideas and processes. In some ways, I hope that my work is visually quite different in ten years to what I am making now, and that it continues transitioning throughout my whole career.
I hope to exhibit overseas, perhaps through a residency. And I would love to see more landscapes and art around the world, to absorb those learnings into my painting language. Most importantly, I hope that I am still painting, still exhibiting, still making art.
