"At best it feels like having life running through your veins."

Tim Steward (Photo credit: Paul Lewis Images)

March 2025

Through Hilary Term at Wycliffe, Oxford Artist Tim Steward has been exhibiting a range of his work including architectural and figurative drawings and images exploring hope and beauty in the context of Jesus’s life. He kindly gave us this interview:

Three words (or phrases) to describe your artistic style...

Visceral, spontaneous, messy.

You create mostly outdoors - in architectural environments and wilderness landscapes - what draws you to these subjects?

The notion of beauty foremost; I choose places where I feel a connection, so I want to engage and discover more through the act of drawing.

Why paint?

I love it. I love the tactile nature of it. I love how art can and should compel us to look again. It demands time and consideration on the part of the maker and viewer, and taps into the otherness and the unknowing of the world around us. This is important. There is so much more to life than what we first see and feel, and there is so much to learn in studied observation, and this always keeps me interested.

As a Christian, how would you reflect on your faith journey in relation to your artistic journey?

The art is the life, and the life is the art in so many ways I think. The two are entwined. John Ruskin talks of how the best art is something that works through you. Certainly a channelling or carrying of hopes, dreams, trials and faith through the creative journey makes us who we are, and makes the art what it is.

What are the two most important aspects to painting?

Complete focus and time spent.

Is there a significant Christian book/writer that has influenced you?

Tozer’s ‘Pursuit of God’ will always be a significant text for me. It was written on a single train journey and the surge of words and passion connected with me. Oswald Chambers has also been a disciplining voice I have appreciated.

Is there a particular landscape that has changed and challenged you - personally and/or in your faith?

Placing myself in the wild landscape of North Cornwall was very intentional in stripping life back and finding a stillness in my own heart. Eight years done the line I have grieved about many things in Cornwall, environmental loss, the Church, ageing parents. The wide open spaces and beauty of nature are of great solace.

You develop deep, enduring relationships with specific landscapes - yet without growing stale. How do you accomplish this?

You have to keep the movement in the thing. It is vital. Although I return to the same places often, I am constantly trying to develop and build on all that I have felt and created previously. Memory and a sense of knowing in a place play a huge role in what I create.

What does the physical process of making art look and feel like, for you?

At best it feels like having life running through your veins. A flow state. It can however also be many other things!

How would you define 'success' for an artist?

Being true to yourself, and saying what it is that you feel you have to say.

Had you not become an artist, what alternative job/vocation/path might you enjoy? (serious or non-serious answers welcome!)

I've always really admired the art of being a good waiter, but also a good cook. Both appeal.

Favourite place in Oxford, and why?

Quod and enjoying some fine soup.

Which artists (late or living) would you most like to go for a drink with, and why?

The Irish writer and poet John O’Donohue. He was a wonderful man with great insight into living richly and deeply.

One of the impressionists, Monet perhaps. Any man who is crazy enough to spend several hours digging a trench in the ground in order to lower a ridiculously large canvas into it so that he could paint the upper parts of the canvas on sturdy ground, deserves respect. There is much to learn from someone of his ambition and conviction necessary to paint the huge paintings, like those displayed in the Orangerie in Paris. This was a man that had something to say.

My old friend Franz. He was a pianist and piano tuner, and also blind. He was a man of great faith whose creativity and mischief oozed from his pores. I always departed from his company feeling encouraged, wonderfully so.