Issue 001: Timothy Ellis Cole
When we think Timothy Ellis Cole, we immediately think prints we would love to have framed on our walls. Tim’s unique illustration and design concepts include textured characters embedded or from nature alongside patterns and grooves. Every piece is carefully crafted to mimic and enhance the animal’s surroundings: an owl with a body like leaves, a whale made of literal waves. His style almost feels like a refreshingly modern take on ’60s psychedelic cartoons and we’re obsessed with it.
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Timothy Ellis Cole
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Timothy Ellis Cole
The Interview:
How did you get started?
I got started way back in school as a kid. I couldn’t really stop with notebook doodles, and sometimes I still function like everything is a kind of casual doodle.
What are you doing now?
I’m currently working on an illustration series of whales called “Intelligent Mammal.” I’m also working on a board that is being raffled off to raise money for Atlantic White Shark Conservancy here on Cape Cod for Vec Surfboards.
The Intelligent Mammal series will hopefully go on to become a collaborative project with the Army Core of Engineers about Right Whales that will educate visitors to the Cape Cod Canal on some of the biodiversity created by the canal and some of the animals that pass through it.
What inspires you?
I’m inspired by all that surrounds me. Natural and man-made elements of my environment serve as perpetual inspiration. The way I draw and the images in the work are a direct reflection of my life experience as inspired by all that I see and experience in my environment up to the moment I put something on paper, canvas, or salvaged material. The environmental inspiration comes through in the way I physically incorporate foraged elements of the hand-made paper I use for prints and the salvaged wood I use in mixed media paintings.
Beyond the environmental factors, I am heavily inspired by my son, Mackinac, and my wife, Jennie. They keep me energized and driven to create work and are a constant reminder of all the beauty that is out there to interpret in creative projects.
What does art mean to you? In other words, define art for us.
Art is everywhere and is potentially in everything seen, heard, felt or experienced in any way. Acknowledging the beauty in experiencing things deems them art to me.
Art can also be an interpretation of experience through any medium created knowingly or coincidentally.
Tell us about your most favorite piece of work that you have done. Why is it meaningful to you?
My favorite piece of work is “Vertigo Saved My Life.” It is an owl of hand-torn paper feathers made from odd cuts of hand-made paper that accumulated in the studio. Making paper is pretty tedious, so it felt good to put the scraps to good use. The piece is meaningful to me because it was a last minute idea for a show and was done the night before installation. It looks planned, but it came out well because I let it happen rather than planned the piece out. It reminds me to just let things happen on their own as much as I can because that is when good work comes together. I can crank out drawings that are all marginally meaningful, but when I loosen up and avoid forcing production, the end result feels more meaningful because there is something unexplained about the origin. Keeping in mind that I don’t know where it all comes from enables work like this to happen.
Vertigo Saved My Life by Timothy Ellis Cole
The Outlyers:
If you could travel anywhere, where would you travel? And why?
I would go back to Great Harbor Cay in the Bahamas where I used to visit my grandmother as a little kid. It was the coolest place to spend time and I really want to share it with my family and experience it as an adult.
Finish this sentence…
I’m the happiest when…I’m with my son and am able to just focus on that, blocking out any of life’s many distractions.
I feel most fulfilled when…I think about the awesome dude my wife and I made somehow.
It’s happy hour, what are you ordering?
A silver coin margarita.
Timothy Ellis Cole is based in Cape Cod, MA.
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