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TIMOTHY CHARLES JACOBS: "A New Exciting Turn In the Road"
By Christy McCarley

WEBSTER, NC-To inspire his work, artist Tim Jacobs has always relied on two things. For traveling the byways of his imagination, he counts on his memories. For driving the highways of his native North Carolina mountains mile after mile, year after year, he depends on good cars. If he ever counted them, Jacobs has probably logged hundreds of thousands of hours in a series of Volkswagen, Subaru, Toyota and Isuzu vehicles on job or family-related business along the winding secondary roads of the pastoral countryside. He is a native son who took a side road only a couple of times to accept jobs in South Carolina and Texas, but always returned to the place where his heart-and his art-are most at home.

"My family for generations had farms up near what is now the Blue Ridge Parkway. I spent my growing-up years working and playing on huge expanses of land," he said. "We were always in the outdoors hiking and riding horses, my brother and cousins and I, and that's where the landscape comes from for me. I'm very much at home and comfortable in rural spaces."

From Thickety, where his family put down roots generations ago on sprawling farmlands to surrounding communities that go by names like Cruso, Ironduff, Crabtree, and Newfound, Jacobs knows the mountains so well he can remember how the light is diffused along a certain road at a given time of day. There are barns and outbuildings he can point out and explain how the color will change and what angles the shadows will take on in late afternoon.

Driving along as the landscape unfolds and rolls past, he notes the movement of grassy meadows in the breeze and dark lines of trees along the ridge top. But he never stops along the roadside to paint or sketch on location. That will come later back at home in his studio. Clouds and skies, possibly blue, sometimes yellow, or a structure or trees will appear. Prevalent themes in his abstract paintings are bright color and movement. For many viewers, the work is evocative of real-life environments they have seen or imaginary wide-open spaces and the serenity that they inspire.

Though his paintings are influenced by the landscape, Jacobs puts a lot of humanity in his work. "I want my paintings to touch people and to give them a connection with a place or a time of day," he said. "If they help recall a memory or inspire their imagination, that makes a huge difference and the work is more successful to me."

Sometimes in Jacobs' work a subtle winding road appears. It grows wider and narrows again, coming and going in much the same way that his painting did in the past when he set life priorities, put the art aside, then returned to it again.

"For many years there were work and family commitments that came first, and I enjoyed that. But I've reach a stage now when I can devote the time needed for the work and find myself gravitating back to my studio with a new energy and focus."

Born in Canton, Jacobs went to public schools in Haywood County and earned a full scholarship and degree in art from Western Carolina University in 1971. Married just after his college graduation, he spend the next three decades working for the university, raising two children, building houses, and staying involved in the regional art scene, though more as an advocate than a painter. He opened Chelsea Gallery at WCU, where he was director of the University Center. "I was heavily involved with exhibits there for many years," he said. "The gallery work kept me in touch with artists and their work. So I was doing the kinds of things that have helped me with my own painting down the road."

His two children are grown now and out on their own. Jacobs has retired from the university. He makes it his practice to paint most days, often well into the night. His studio takes up the lower level of his rustic house, which sits like a rock outcropping on a wooded hillside in Webster. The walls of the house are filled with his paintings, wood furniture handmade by his father, art books and family photos.

Several years ago, at the age of 50, he went back to WCU for a Master of Arts degree in painting. The experience, he says, gave him the focus and discipline he needed renew his lifelong ambition to be a studio artist. With several recent gallery openings in western North Carolina, requests coming in for lectures and demonstrations, and his paintings beginning to sell to collectors, he finds himself at a new and exciting turn in the road.