Adam Prudhomme
Beaver Staff
Regular readers of The Napanee Beaver are well aware of Tim Nimigan’s humourous side, having seen his comics in the paper for over a decade.
The cartoonist behind the “Our Town” comic strip will showcase his serious side in a new exhibit to be displayed at the Lennox and Addington County Museum and Archives. Titled “Reflect: A Retrospective of Art,” the exhibit will launch Oct. 26 when Nimigan will be on hand to share interesting and funny stories of his 43 years in Napanee that have inspired his artwork.
The display will feature landscapes, portraits, still-life and even a sculpture, all with a rural feel.
“I draw things that people wouldn’t think to paint necessarily,” Nimigan says of his still-life. “I draw things that are meaningful to me.”
On that note he points to a painting of a crushed bucket that he spotted on a farm one day.
His style also includes a wide range of mediums, a by-product of his time as a high school art teacher. Even while he was in the classroom he would always be working on his own creations using the medium he was teaching at the time. That included charcoal, oil pastel, prismacolor, oil, acrylic and sculpting. Several examples of his works in those mediums will be part of his exhibit.
During his time in the classroom he often urged students to get creative, even if it means painting a realistic object. He took his own advice, inserting a creative flair into his work such as using real lace to accent a drawing of a pair of skates. At first glance the laces appear to be drawn like the rest of the work but upon closer inspection an observer might notice the lace is jumping off the print.
Along with his bi-weekly cartoon, Nimigan is also well known around town for his portraits. Perhaps most well-known among those is that of Harold Flanagan. Though Nimigan has quite the collection of portraits now, it wasn’t always a style he imagined himself doing.
“I was a young teacher, setting up an apartment and I needed things you could find at an auction,” said Nimigan. “I would sit there and get outbid and realized I was wasting my time. So I started bringing my sketchbook and started sketching people at the auction.”
It was then that he began to amass his collection of rural characters, many of which will be on display at the museum. Because he often sketches strangers it’s not unheard of for someone to approach him years later and tell him they love the sketch he did of their friend or relative from Napanee, while Nimigan struggles to recall who they’re talking about. He is hoping people will recognize some of the nameless faces he has in his collection.
His Oct. 26 exhibit-opening talk will begin at 7 p.m. Admission is $3 at the door. The exhibit will run through Dec. 8.