Accident leads to provocative art
By: Virginia Pelley
Special to The Examiner
June 11, 2009
 |
| Bold abstract: Margaret Timbrell’s colorful, dreamy works will be on view next week at “Art in the Parc: Parc 55 Hotel’s 55-Hour Renovation Party.” (Courtesy Photo) |
SAN FRANCISCO — Margaret Timbrell spent three weeks in San Francisco General Hospital with 25 to 30 fractured ribs, tubes in her chest and “all sorts of terrible stuff” after she was run over by a truck in 2006.
The traumatic experience and long recovery changed how the conceptual artist and photographer thought about life and took her work in a new direction.
“I was awake at all sorts of strange hours and had a lot of time to think about myself, my life and my accident,” says Timbrell, who was invited by Delysium, an event planning group, to show at Parc 55 Hotel’s 55-hour art and fashion exhibition. The party, which begins at 6 p.m. Tuesday, celebrates the hotel’s renovation.
“Needless to say, I wasn’t booking time in the dark room. A friend jokingly suggested that I write the Great American novel, so I did. It was essentially a study in pain — physical and psychological. But this allowed me cathartic creativity while my mobility was limited.”
Her boyfriend brought the bed-bound artist an easel so she could work during her recovery, and a painter was born.
Abstract, layered studies of disparate colors, Timbrell’s bright paintings are sometimes dreamy, sometimes frenetic and restless.
“When I paint, I kind of let myself go and become absorbed in the laying down of color, working along as they harmonize or repel,” Timbrell says. “I like when color burns out your eyes, like when you stare at fluorescent colors — they just vibrate in a way that triggers all my beauty sensors. Something so beautiful it hurts.”
Timbrell’s paintings also hang in Sugar Cafe on Sutter Street and So Me on Haight Street.
Despite booking so many shows, Timbrell, says her work doesn’t exactly jibe with what’s considered trendy. “I don’t make work for anyone other than myself, but I’m extremely pleased when other people do like it,” she says.
It’s likely that Timbrell’s accident has a lot to do with the palpable depth and seriousness even in the young artist’s most — on the surface — whimsical paintings.
“I maybe think about death more than other people,” she says. “It’s kind of simplistic, but I frequently feel like I ought to be dead. My accident should have killed me, but I was extremely lucky and yet despite my good luck, one day I will die. There are things that I need to complete before then.”
IF YOU GO
Art in the Parc
- Where: Parc 55 Hotel, 55 Cyril Magnin St., San Francisco
- When: Opening reception 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday
- Admission: Free
- Contact: (415) 392-8000
- Note: Guests are asked to RSVP to rsvpart@glodownead.com
