My Own Wilderness: Tim Stone Gallery

On October 18^th Kansas Wesleyan celebrated Tim Stone and his exhibit “My Own Wilderness”. This was one of many of the wonderful events held during Homecoming weekend. Stones’s work was showcased with an exceptional reception held by Lori Wright, the Department Chair of the Art and Design program. Other showcases include Kansas Through the Lens from the beginning of this school year. 

“This was a unique experience. I learned a lot about different techniques I could use. And more about an MFA.”

–Colleen Regan, Studio Art Major.

Tim Stone is from Kansas, graduated from Wichita State University, and holds a BFA in painting. Currently, he is a professor at Wichita State University and teaching at the Lawrence Art Center. The Lawarence Art Center has this page dedicated to Tim Stone. Stone is a well-established artist being published in an episode of from Hutchinson Art Center, Blue Barn production, PBS series Artists in their Spaces, and a book where he was featured called Wichita Artist in their Studios. He was in a 2021 Emerging Artist Showcase, and has work featured in commercial spaces such as Emprise Bank, Coke Industries, and Hutton Construction.

Stone is a landscape painter, who focuses on the environment around him. Showing the environment, he is exposed to allowing art to mirror life and life to mirror art. The work from My Own Wilderness investigates the limited spaces people see, primarily working on being transient. 

Unique Work

Stone paints with Oil, Acrylic, and Spray Paint in this showcase. This unique style makes him one of the few in this community who primarily uses these materials. Stone uses these different mediums to better express what he wants to focus on in each piece. Stone enjoys the utilitarian use of spray paint in everyday life. Seeing spray paint daily in the environment, from trees that are being cut down, to lines in lawn marking a gas line, or the tags on abandoned trains. Stone transforms these materials into fine art giving it a new life in his work.

Stone mixes rigid art and soft gradients with his works, and he thanks his formal art education for allowing him to work in both ways to learn how to better appeal to an audience.  “I haven’t come up with some formula with how I am going to do something. It is important to not produce the same painting every time,” Stone stated. He went on about how the process is more organic than a simple step-by-step process.

Kansas Wesleyan University was pleased to have Tim Stone on campus for this opportunity. Allowing students and staff to see the face behind the work that has been on display in the gallery of the Fine Arts Building. This gave students the chance to meet a well-established artist that they can look to as a reference for their potential career.

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