Timothy Berry: I would have made Simpler Drawings but I didn’t have time

In the first exhibition of drawings by the Bay Area artist known for his painting and print-making, Timothy Berry presents exquisitely dark and delicate visions of childhood, history, and memory.

Drawings beautifully rendered in graphite and delicately tinted with washes are cut into pieces and reorganized. In these works resembling misarranged jigsaw puzzles, Berry creates post-modern layers and juxtapositions with uncanny appeal.

To those who know his work, Berry’s subject matter will be familiar. Imagery appropriated from vintage children’s books—anthropomorphized animals, toys, and mythical creatures—overlays patterns based on architectural ornament. Hothouse flowers, lush and sensuous, intertwine the images.

There is a sort of fin-de-siècle aesthetic at work. The organic rhythms of William Morris blend with the queasy sensuousness of Lewis Carroll’s portraits of droopy-eyed little girls and the threat of domestic pets transformed into leering beasts of prey. For Berry, clearly, beneath the pretty flowers and pastel-hued memories of childhood, something is amiss in wonderland.