“As the Tories make everyday life for the majority of people ever more difficult it is Timothy Neat who reminds us, so timely and opportunely as we wrestle with this new stage in our evolving democracy, that art can make life possible, joyous. As Pushkin wrote “Pechal moya svelta” or “My sadness is luminous”. What the artist supplies us with in “The Day of the Mountain” is a “luminous” truth and the four year period these drawings were created in proves that in Timothy Neat Scotland possess an artist who is obsessively busy and who is also aware of time and how it passes. If we are to achieve the freedom we require then all of Scotland’s artists have to be similarly “busy” telling the truth because the other mediums to which we can turn are few. In our political processes we may stutter and stagger. It is in our artists we succeed. Timothy Neat sets it out quite plainly,

“When I bought my sketchbooks and began drawing again (after a break of fifty years) I had a vague sense that I was preparing myself for artistic, cultural and political responsibility.”

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2016/04/28/the-freedom-of-the-mountain-from-the-province-of-the-cat/

“The Day of the Mountain” is published by Polygon. wwwpolygonbooks.co.uk ISBA 978 1 84697 358 1

The Fall of Light: 200 new drawings by Timothy Neat opens on 7th May at Wallprojects in Montrose. See www.wallprojectsltd.com for details.

“To draw is to draw breath.”

“The exhilaration of being in the world, of communion, the range of subjects, the eye roaming and alighting, the quick empathy and falling in step with another human being, the artist looking at and simultaneously looking from. All occurs in that empathetic moment, a quick grace, bestowal and receiving…. This great freedom to look and feel to let in the world, to cast one’s gaze.”

At the Science Festival in Edinburgh, City Art Centre, Market Street 9th April 2016. I took a video of a giant bubble machine, music and background noise. 

“You don’t test a gentle person the way that you don’t steep tea for too long. Submerge me and I will imbue, and what was sweet will be bitter. I will be strong on your tongue and unpleasant to the taste, you’ll regret drowning me in your guile. My gentleness is not for your taking.”

“We must be ready to be astonished, even when it is uncomfortable and morally expensive.”

On reading poetry

“I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all of these things at once, and cannot add up the sum.”

C.G. Jung – Memories, Dreams, Reflections