Tim Allen was born in 1950 in Manchester and brought up in Durham City. He studied at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne from 1968 until 1972 and graduated from Goldsmiths College, London in 1980. Over his career, he has produced a vast body of work, with colour and movement at the forefront of his aesthetic concerns. His painting techniques merge both traditional graining brushes and various other tools with custom built painterly devices that produce parallel strokes and mesmerising effects. His work has developed cyclically, from hard edge abstraction, through free-form multi-image paintings, to landscape based semi-abstractions, and back again to pure abstraction. Allen’s paintings are always made using an improvisatory approach. His process is a perpetual event of remaking and revisiting, dancing from the past to the present.
Allen has exhibited widely in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. His recent exhibitions include From the Ferry at Dahl Gallery, Luzern, Switzerland; Dual Purpose at Turps Gallery, London; Strukturen/Structures and Multilayer, both curated by Ivo Ringe. His work is also featured in many public and private collections worldwide.