“La Donna Incinta” on display in the GRAM (Grand Rapids Art Museum), and photos of me painting plein air on the Arno in 2005
About Thimgan Hayden
“I think of myself as an artifact maker. I collect fleeting emotions and observations, and sensitively turn them into long-lasting objects of art.”
Thimgan began selling paintings and teaching adult art classes at the age of sixteen.
Having sold more than 300 original artworks, her drawings and paintings are in private and public collections in the Americas and beyond.
Her works have been been featured in popular art magazines and she has won numerous regional and international awards from the Art Renewal Center, American Artist Magazine, Oil Painters of America, Best of Show in the Regional Exhibition at Muskegon Museum of Art, and has exhibited on her own as well as ArtPrize, The Grand Rapids Art Museum and at the American Women Artists Show. She is a member of the Portrait Society of America.
Thimgan’s extended family is from the Midwest, and after having lived in Washington, Alaska, Florida, Wisconsin, Maine and Italy, she currently lives and works in southwestern Michigan.
Why I Paint and Make Things
As a sensitive “noticer” (how I describe myself), a controllable world on canvas gives me a way to escape the noise and stress of modern times and focus on the many qualities of my life that feel timeless. That could be as simple as appreciating how light grazes the skin of an onion, or how many shades of green there are on a fine, spring morning. It could be finding a particularly fine tomato at the farmers’ market, picking flowers from my garden, or admiring a waterfall.
I’ll never forget seeing a tiny, bright blue-colored stemmed glass sitting amongst the drab bones from an Etruscan gravesite in the Archeological Museum in Fiesole (Tuscany), Italy. I was overwhelmed by the eeriness of how a delicate, fragile glass could “outlive” the humans who had made it by centuries! There was something so poignant about that, so bittersweet. It spoke of art’s ability to remind us that we have the opportunity to make the world a more beautiful place, a better place, for having lived.
Drawing and painting have been a lifetime pursuit. As a child I was fascinated by my mother’s art books. As a nine year old, I pored over “English Dreamers”, a book on Pre-Raphaelite works, as well as a guide to the National Gallery of London. I was especially drawn to paintings by Titian and John Everett Millais… my full personal story is on my blog! Click to read it.
