Today we’d like to introduce you to Tim Fagaly.
Hi Tim, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
As a visual artist, I find what interests me most is the connection we find in the words we attach to images. Growing up, I had three other siblings in a homeschooled, religious environment. We enjoyed our Transformers and Ninja Turtles and Star Wars as much as any other child would. However, the singular impact they would have on myself and us as a whole shaped how we perceived and accepted narratives and aesthetics. That perception and distillation of pop culture pointed my focus into comic books, further introducing me to diverse means of sequential storytelling and imagery and embracing the creative energies to improve and produce more of how I felt I wanted to draw.
Eventually, after having graduated from Cal State University Long Beach with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration, despite having gained a great deal of craft and experience, I found myself drifting from commission to commission, not finding much to say in my work. It was around the time I connected with the San Diego Sketchparty, which connects local and distant curious artists in a casual “drink and draw.” It allowed me to embrace the natural art scene of our city as well as meeting new and wonderful local artists, each with their own ways of saying who they are. Eventually, I found my preference for pigment marker illustrations that enabled a new and fresh approach to my work I hadn’t known for a long time.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
The challenges my way have largely been connected to my self-disconnect to being unable to say something with my work, which made producing pieces harder to come by. I found that by being more curious about “why?” I made the work, asking more questions helped my crisis of creation.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
My work remains interested in naturalist approaches to word play of pop culture portraiture and characters in stillness. There’s a fascination I have with rendering the eclectic and sometimes obscure characters in the same way I would want to talk to the solitary person in a party who looks like they could use human validation and make them feel welcomed. I often see who I draw and color as people and creatures I’m conversing with; understanding who they are and how they got to this point in time.
I’m not sure what I’m particularly proud of, other than the communication that people who have enjoyed my work come to me with and telling me how it affected them and who or what I made in the image. In many ways, my approach to making work starts with curiosity and ends with concern, hoping I got to properly know who or what I made in a way I should know a good friend by now.
I use Faber-Castell pigment markers, and typically on toned paper, so in that sense I stand apart by medium. As I’ve gotten older, I understand more differences of depicting moments of activity and stillness and trying to find the subtle spaces in-between. It applies to life as well. Those moments of stillness, of nothingness, are both a place and nowhere. It can’t be taken away because by concept it is the lack of something. My quest for stillness in what I make is maybe what people see differently beyond details and mediums and pop references.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
Having a sincere curiosity and mindfulness in the work and lives of others will always be a firm step in engaging in a community. Humans can sense a genuine individual trying to connect to others in getting to know them, in ways not seen as purely transactional but also sharing life and letting a person where they’re at in a moment. I’ve found that addressing and validating both a potential mentor and admitting your own vulnerability in asking to connect allows barriers to be lowered and creates a space of openness. Asking more about their experiences and work, not as a machine but as a person, engages them beyond a simple Q&A. As you acknowledge, so you in the same way will be acknowledged.
Contact Info:
- Email: tfagaly@gmail.com
- Website: www.timfagaly.com
- Instagram: @tfagaly
- Twitter: @timfagaly
