About Tim Mooney
Tim grew up in the Central Valley of California. His many trips to Yosemite National Park with family and friends infused his soul with a visual and visceral template of rolling foothills, gnarly live oaks, and the wonder of the Mist Trail, El Capitan, Half Dome, giant sequoia trees, and Yosemite Falls. He felt at home in nature’s grandeur.
He went off to college and majored in Religion and Sociology. He took a drawing class and the professor wanted him to become an art major. No, he was going into the ministry. He graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary and took his first call as a youth pastor at a 2,100-member church in the San Francisco Bay Area. A pastor for life.
But by his third year in ministry, he knew his creative itch could no longer be ignored. His girl-friend bought him a small water-color set. At a flea market in Sonoma he bought a big box of used acrylic tubes of paint for cheap. The café owner allowed him to hang his first show in her little place. A friend told him, “One of your paintings is gone!” Tim asked incredulously, “Somebody stole it??” “No, they bought it!” Two shows later he sold three 36×48 inch paintings for $2,000 each. He joined a working studio and gallery in Berkeley, CA, and began selling regularly with a loyal following.
His first church commissioned him to do a seven painting installation for Lent; a new painting replaced the previous painting every Sunday. On Easter morning, he sat in the back, and watched the reactions of people as they came into the sanctuary, and saw all seven paintings, each one transformed, and now hanging together from the vaulted ceiling for the first time. Tears of joy, in their eyes, and his. Tim knew, creativity and spirituality, went hand-in-hand.
Tim is self-taught. Experimentation and errors have been his faithful teachers. He’s learned to trust them. Initially inspired by the Impressionists, Tim’s landscapes took on their own character, and developed into a new style – “Abscapes” – landscapes with abstract elements, often putting civilization and nature cheek-to-jowel, for this relationship, if done well, will keep us alive. For this style of painting he won First Place at the 2016 Sedona Arts Festival.
Tim, initially, did not like abstracts – they were too easy. Just throw paint on a canvas! His first abstract was a hot mess, and he suddenly knew abstraction was a complex, foreign language, with a completely different alphabet. He wanted to learn it, and he has. Tim now calls his abstracts “Inscapes”. He sees them as metaphors for the soul, for the coming apart and falling together of our lives, all happening simultaneously.
Tim also does figurative paintings. He loves to capture uncomfortable moments and the comfortable ones in odd, unique ways. How many paintings exist of The Annunciation? In Tim’s version, Mary’s hair is short, black, like her dress, like the background, and a shadow falls upon Mary’s arm, to which she is both drawn and repelled, reflecting the words found in the Gospel of Luke spoken by the angel, “and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” The painting won best of show in the 2012 Spirituality Show at CORE New Art Space in Denver, CO.
In 2018 Tim was awarded the honor of painting six out of fourteen murals at a new high-rise medical building in Denver’s River North Art District. When he found out the murals were to be painted on the walls seen as you pushed open the door to the lavatories, Tim lovingly called it “The Sh*t Show!” Art is appropriate everywhere.
Tim paints in his River North studio, serves part-time at Central Presbyterian Church in Denver, performs as a Singer-Songwriter locally and nationally, and has written a book. Tim’s creativity and spirituality go hand-in-hand, coming apart and falling together simultaneously.
Shows and Exhibitions
Seeing is Believing?
Group Show
Space Gallery, Denver, CO
Early 2018
Sedona Arts Festival 2016
First Place Award – Painting Category
Sedona, AZ
Abstract Show
CORE New Art Space, Denver, CO
November 15 – December 2, 2012
Juror: Dean Sobel, Director Clyfford Still Museum
“Unthoughts” and “Meditation #6”
Retrospective
11th Anniversary Group Show
SPACE Gallery, Denver, CO
July 13-27, 2012
Spirituality Show
CORE New Art Space – May 13–27, 2012
Juror: Hilory De Polo, Art Consultant and Management
“Annunciation” – Best of Show
“Not By Bread Alone” – Honorable Mention
Dance, Dance, Dance!
Two-Person Show
March 24 – April 10, 2011
CORE New Art Space, Denver, CO
Abscapes
Two-Person Show
October 21 – November 7, 2010
CORE New Art Space, Denver, CO
Open Abstract Show
CORE New Art Space, Denver, CO
Summer 2009
“Meditation #27” – Best of Show
Juror: Michael Burnett, owner SPACE Gallery
Abstraction
Three Person Show
February 18 – March 4, 2008
Fourth St. Studio, Berkeley, CA
Called To Create: The Communion of Art and Faith
Artist in Residence and Speaker
March 28-30, 2008
Alliance of Baptists Convocation, New Orleans, LA
Winter Greens
Solo Show
December 20 – January 17, 2007
Ross Valley Winery, San Anselmo, CA
Variety Fair
Group Show
June, 2007
Art-Scape Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA
Betrayal or Forgiveness
Performance Art
Maundy Thursday, April, 2007
Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church, Lafayette, CA
Arts Benicia
Group Show
February 2007
Benicia, CA
Visions of Advent
December 2006
Clayton Valley Presbyterian Church, Clayton, CA
Recent Works
Solo Show
May 4 – June 29, 2006
University Club, San Francisco, CA
Descent Into Easter
Progressive Installation
April 13 – March 27, 2005
Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church, Lafayette, CA
Recovering the Language of Lament
Group Show
May-June 2002
Montreat Conference Center, Montreat, NC
Lafayette Art & Wine Festival
Juried Art Show, 1999
Category: Winning Artists
Lafayette, CA
Galleries and Art Districts
SPACE Gallery
Denver, CO
CORE New Art Space
Denver, CO
Voted Best Gallery in Santa Fe Arts District 2010
Horton Fine Arts/Paderewski Gallery
Beaver Creek, CO
Denver Art Co., Inc.
Denver, CO
Artwork Network
Denver, CO
Nine Dot Arts
Denver, CO
River North Art District
Denver, CO
Fourth St. Studio
Berkeley, CA
Private Collectors
Christy Walton, Jackson Hole, WY
Jerry and Betty Arca, Denver, CO
Wendel, Rosen, Black & Dean, LLP, Oakland, CA
Vina Tambolini, San Carlos, CA
Ruth Pease, Moraga, CA
Chris Copeland, Washington D.C.
Marcel and Shannon Beauclair, Kirkland, WA
Doug and Myra McBain, Santa Rosa, CA
David Durochik, Chicago, IL
Jennifer Venceller, George Kiltzmiller, Oakland, CA
Tim Johnson, Oakland, CA
Kiran and Rabina Karnad, Oakland, CA
Brian Hernandez and Aimee Williams, San Francisco, CA
Mary Beth Read, Orinda, CA
Kim Bass, Danville, CA
Carter Via, New York, NY
Mark and Jill Yaconelli, Ashland, OR
Tom Glenn, Columbia, SC
Rebecca Langer, Jacksonville, FL
Sterling Hughes, San Francisco, CA
Jon Graden, Oakland, CA
Naomi Tam, Tom Klenke, Incline Village, NV
Pamela Davis, Alfred Forrest, Los Angeles, CA
Juliana and Rob Spring, Pymble, N.S.W., Australia
Nathan and Luanne Skow, Seattle, WA
Dan and Ellen Flamen, Palo Alto, CA
Bill and Dee-Ann Leone, Lighthouse Point, FL
Sam Hamilton-Poore, San Anselmo, CA
Joe and Carrie Coulson, Charlottesville, VA
Holly Adams, Vail, CO
Carol Carpenter, New Orleans, LA
Media and Publications
Front Cover – “Borderlands Part Deux”
Presence: International Journal of Spiritual Direction
Vol. 22, No. 3, September 2016
“The Many Forms of Spirituality at Core New Art Space this Collector’s Friday,”
Tiffany Fitzgerald, Westword
May 27, 2012.
Front Cover – “Dappled Day”
Presence: International Journal of Spiritual Direction
Vol. 13, No. 4, December 2007, p. 22.