Timothy Grieco, Artist – Edmonton
Timothy Grieco is an artist and musician whose work moves between painting, pattern-based abstraction, and interdisciplinary cultural research. He is interested in outsider systems of knowledge, embodied practice, and alternative structures of perception drawn from religion, subculture, and physical discipline. His painting exhibition Not Solid is on view at Harcourt House Artist-Run Centre until June 20.
- Rebirth of Beherit and the afterlife of the outsider ethos
Seeing Beherit live in Finland felt like witnessing a temporal glitch. Once dismissed as absurd, even within extreme metal, the band is now widely respected as one of the genre’s most inventive and unclassifiable acts. Their early work embraced chaos, minimalism, and outsider production, while later ambient and electronic releases pushed further from orthodoxy. What once seemed buried in the underground now feels like a blueprint for black metal’s most boundaryless creative possibilities.
- Tibetan Buddhism and repetition as perception shift
A 2019 visit to the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art reshaped my understanding of meditation, visual structure, and repetition in painting. Already meditating regularly, I was prompted to explore Tibetan Buddhism more deeply and later spent time at Gaden Samten Ling in Edmonton. Reading cosmologies in which atoms are infused with Buddhas and bodhisattvas affirmed the circular forms already present in my work. Repetition became less a compositional strategy than a perceptual method, as painting itself began to function as meditation.
- UFO lore and the projection of the unknown
The current wave of UFO discourse feels both distracting and revealing. My interest lies less in proof than in projection: the way people cast conflict, morality, and fear of the other onto the unknown. That links to a lifelong fascination with “us and them,” from childhood religion to geopolitical narratives. These subjects depend heavily on source quality, yet the present moment offers strong independent research. American Alchemy, Area 52, and UAP Gerb are among the more grounded spaces I’ve recently found for exploring them.
- Brazilian jiu-jitsu and embodied intelligence
Starting Brazilian jiu-jitsu in my forties has been unexpectedly formative. Though I was never drawn to team sports, grappling has offered unusual clarity. It is a martial art that can be tested safely and constantly, in training and competition alike. Nothing remains abstract for long. Progress is slow but measurable, and the mat strips away ego, replacing it with timing, discipline, and problem-solving under pressure. Few environments make intelligence feel so immediate, physical, and repeatable.
- Voudon-inspired painting and sacred play
Love Leonce
I have been collecting recent Haitian paintings by artists such as Love Leonce, Despeignes Roody, and Lesly Pierrepaul. Their work holds a striking tension between the sublime and the playful: spiritually serious, yet full of colour, humour, and excess. Timoun Art School and New Vision Art School in Port-au-Prince extend that energy, enabling young artists to make and sell work. The contrast between childlike whimsy and postcolonial morbidity gives these paintings their force and resilience.