Additional Images

Provenance:

Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Leif Norman.

The Work & Artist Bio

Among many of Tim Schouten’s skills is his ability to make an abstraction read like a landscape in the making. On the scumbled encaustic surface he makes shapes and marks that move towards becoming animate. The craggy resilience of Agwaaganii’indwaa, 2022, which means “Negotiating the Treaty” in Ojibway continues Schouten’s intensely committed investigation of how settler and Indigenous historical realities can come together to make a space both on the canvas and in life. This encaustic painting was included in an extensive exhibition of landscapes, text-based works and abstractions, called “Treaty 5 Suite (Lost in Translation).” It was organized by the North Dakota Museum of Art last year. Agwaaganii’indwaa is reproduced in the catalogue.

Tim Schouten is a painter who works primarily in encaustic. His practice probes the edges of landscape, language, history, and kinship. His work incorporates figuration, text, and abstraction as systems for discovery and disclosure. He lives and works as a settler on Treaty 1 territory.

Schouten studied art under Gordon Raynor, Graham Coughtry and Robert Markle at Art’s Sake Inc. in Toronto. Schouten is known for his extended project, “The Treaty Suites,” and for his paintings of horses. His painting career spans four decades and his work is held in numerous private, corporate, and public collections, including the Winnipeg Art Gallery, The Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba, the North Dakota Museum of Art, the Province of Manitoba and Toronto Dominion Bank. His work was featured in an episode of the Grammy award winning TV series Landscape as Muse. He has attended residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, the Emma Lake Artists’ Workshop, McCanna House in North Dakota, Plug In ICA, Winnipeg and the Artbarn in Western Pennsylvania, where he will return in 2024. Schouten has presented 13 solo exhibitions, participated in five two-person and over forty group exhibitions in Canada and the U.S. Select exhibitions include “Perspectives” with Robert Houle and curated by Patricia Bovey at Buhler Gallery, Winnipeg (2009), “aski nipay” with KC Adams at Gurevich Fine Art, Winnipeg (2016) and his recent solo exhibition, “The Treaty 5 Suite (Lost in Translation),” at the North Dakota Museum of Art (2022–23).

Tim Schouten, Border Crossings Issue 93, 2005

Schouten in the Landscape, Border Crossings Issue 66, 1998

Artist's Website

Tim Schouten: The Treaty 5 Suite (Lost in Translation), North Dakota Museum of Art