Tim Allen

Born Oxford, UK

Lives & Works Blue Mountains (Dharug)

At the heart of Tim Allen’s painting practice is a paradox; an expressive, bold, immediate and spontaneous mark-making that is contained within an overall approach that has structure, discipline and a sense of stillness and contemplation. His inspiration is a personal experience of place – often the wilderness landscape. 

Allen paints in the studio with the same spontaneity and intensity that the pressure of time and environment place on his plein air works. He then adds the element of multiple sessions and layers for each painting as well as the contemplative space of thinking and looking between each session. This way the studio paintings have both spontaneity and expressionism as well as thoughtfulness and precision. Initial marks may describe mood, emotion, contour and direction. The image grows as the work develops, becoming more recognisable as a landscape as the painting is finished. 

Tim Allen is the recipient of the Paddington Art Prize (2017) and the Kedumba Drawing Award (2016) and has been a finalist in numerous other awards, including, the King’s School Art Prize (2021, 2018), Muswellbrook Art Prize (2020), Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award, JADA (2020), Tattersall’s Landscape Prize (2019, 2018), Dobell Prize (2012, 2009, 2006) and the Wynne Prize (2007) .

His work is held in numerous private and public collections including the Supreme Court of Victoria, Allens Arthur Robinson and the Bundanon Trust Collection.