Tim Ellis

Glimpses

25 Jan –
16 Mar 2025


As a painter and former art director for international film productions, Tim Ellis deploys the techniques, tools and mediums used for scenic art to make large paintings. In composing a work, his painter’s eye selects one fleeting moment to become a canvas. 

Ellis’ works are executed with bright, fluid brush-strokes, and with a cinematic approach, they show hyper-real moments from life in rural far north Queensland. Infused with this staged intent, his painting technique requires the exacting precision that makes film sets read as ‘real’ and relies on acute observation of surface textures, such as the crackled appearance of aged or distressed timber under film lights.

Moments are caught vividly with storytelling themes of place and time. In some paintings Ellis uses video projections on their surface, and when these two media are combined like this, a dreamlike or fantastical quality arises. 

The work 8:30am, Brisbane Airport - Foot Traffic 2024 is a random glimpse of the legs and luggage of travellers in an airport arrivals or departures setting. Projected onto the painting’s surface is a video loop of lights and reflections in a traffic tunnel, now merging with the airport glimpse of foot traffic. The projection of rushing, repeating fluorescent overhead lights onto an image of airport foot traffic amplifies the strangeness of chance moments in time.

A work of muted tones, Saturday, 4pm - Watching the Gate 2024 contrasts cool interior shadows with strong exterior shafts of light. This dark-and-light play directs the viewer’s eye to the watcher’s shadow at the gate outside.

In Glimpses Tim Ellis presents the moments in life that arrest his penetrating eye.

 

Selected works

 

Installation Images

 

IMAGE:

Tim ELLIS
Saturday, 4pm - Watching the Gate  2024
acrylic on canvas
150 x 110 cm
Courtesy of the artist

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