Tim Southall was born in Staffordshire and grew up on the edge of the heavy industrial heartlands of the Black Country. He studied Fine Art at Northumbria University and then printmaking at the Royal College of Art and l’école des beaux art, Paris. Based in London for twenty years, he taught at University level while maintaining a career as a professional artist before leaving the teaching profession and concentrating solely on making art. For the last 23 years he has been based in Cadiz Province in southern Spain, where he makes most of his work. Tim is an elected member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers.

“My work is figurative and generally uses a narrative framework to explore themes of our shared history, often with a strong character and emotional resonance. I enjoy playing with metaphor, scale and perspective, and creating images that at first seem intrinsically simple, but on closer inspection are complex. My creative process reflects everyday life experiences which are often re-interpreted in an otherworldly context. I am a sponge that soaks up the nuances of character and behaviour that I see in others and also within myself. I often reach back into my childhood experiences to reference a distant me, in a quest to find meaning in what I see here today. This ‘distance’ offers a linear route of my life experience; from birth through to death and everything in between. From these experiences a spark of an idea moves from my mind into notes and jottings, which gradually come together to form compositions. Once I have a rough idea of what I am trying to say, I move directly onto making the piece of work. Much of my work is made in etching as I have an etching press in my studio in Spain. I also make a significant number of silkscreen prints at the Birmingham Printmakers print studio in the UK. Aside from print editions, I also make monotypes inspired by the beauty and colour of my local landscape on the Costa de la Luz.”