Painter Tim Stone is incendiary. At least in the annals of Kansas art. A Tim Stone painting is ‘60s surf contemporary meets New York savoir faire, blended in a Kansas tornado, and best viewed while listening to “Mother of Pearl” by Roxy Music, over and over again. Does that put it safely in a caviar tin for you?
Forgive my verbal cheese, but I want you to know that coupling Stone’s work with any warm milk blather and bore would do it an injustice. Stone’s work unsettles me for all the right reasons. Phthalocyanine green, hyper-fluorescent reds and oranges, pepto-pink coupled with blues, yellows, and smoky ochre with brush strokes smooth to chunky, and fat rivers of color in areas that look like they were applied with a frosting bag.
Tall, thin palm trees and contemporary structures with fiendish dashes of spray paint. Sharp lines coupled with floods of color. Very large, multi-paneled paintings along with small collages, pristinely framed in white. None of this should “work,” but it does, and it succeeds fantastically. The notion that painting was ever dead gets a slap in the face from Tim Stone. Need comparisons? Okay—Paul Theck meets David Hockney—-they have a love-child and....you know the rest.
See Tim Stone’s paintings at City Arts through May 19th.