Artist, Jane M Timken, Artist
As a freshman at Smith College I signed up for a studio art class in which I felt woefully inadequate and was in no way encouraged. I detoured into art history through a Ph.D in Byzantine art at the Institute of Fine Arts. After various part- time teaching gigs as an itinerant Byzantinist, I concluded I was not cut out for the life of an academic. I then started a small publishing house, focused on art-related books, and subsequently set up a letterpress operation where I could actually make books. These books were almost entirely related to flyfishing, something I had taken up in my late forties. It was flyfishing that brought me back to painting. On a trip to Argentina, it occurred to me that I would prefer to capture my surroundings in watercolor instead of endless photographs. I promptly signed up for a watercolor class at The School of Visual Arts. I loved it. Many, many classes and workshops followed. Then the events of September 11, 2001 caused a reevaluation of what mattered most to me, at which point I closed the print shop, gave the press and the type to Smith, and turned to painting full time. In trying to make sense of this seemingly haphazard journey, my extensive background in art history has served me well. But of equal importance is the fishing, for it not only brought me back to making art, it required two qualities essential to being an artist: patience and, above all, persistence. And in both endeavors, it is not the outcome but the process, the journey, that matters.