Tim Steele

When I should have been milking cows on the farm, I was behind the barn, drawing. Art was in me from the start. As a kid, school never quite made sense — until college, where everything clicked. I enrolled in the Professional Art program at Spokane Falls Community College (SFCC), and for the first time, I was immersed in what I loved: design, painting, art history, lapidary — 8 to 12 hours a day. I was home.

It was the early 1970s. Vietnam vets were coming home and landing in the same classrooms. I was awestruck by their presence — worn, scarred, honest. They’d lived through things I couldn’t fathom, and their art told those stories. I was just a small-town kid, listening, learning. When I heard Karel Appel say, “I paint like a barbarian in this barbarous time,” something clicked. These vets were doing just that — telling truth through their art.

That era cracked the world wide open for me. I discovered Picasso — and suddenly, anything felt possible. Warhol, Johns, Rauschenberg — artists who thought in ways I didn’t know existed. I was hungry. I couldn’t afford a book on Alberto Giacometti, so I copied it by hand — page by page — because I had to have it. I still remember learning to paint with Cadmium Red Light and Hooker’s Gree...

MFA Painting, Washington State University
BFA Drawing, Fort Wright College
Professional Art Certificate, Spokane Falls Community College

• South Dakota Governor’s Biennial, juried traveling, South Dakota Art Museum, USD John Day Gallery, Dahl Fine Art Center, Washington Pavilion, 2025-26
• South Dakota State Universty Faculty Exhibit, Washington Pavilion, Sioux Falls, SD
• South Dakota Governor’s Biennial, juried traveling, South Dakota Art Museum, USD John Day Gallery, Dahl Fine Art Center, Washington Pavilion, 2023-24
• Brookings Art Center, Brookings Photography Club, Brookings SD 2020
• The Other Art Fair, Saatchi Art, Chicago IL 2019
• Mesa Art Fair, Mesa AZ 2018
• South Dakota CAA Invitational, Dahl Fine Arts Center, Rapid City, SD 2015
• Paper in Particular, juried, Columbia College, Columbia, MO 2015
• Americas, purchase award, Northwest Art Center, Minot, ND, 2014
• SD College and University Invitational, SDAM, SD 2013
• Northern National, juried, Nicolet Gallery, Rhinelander, WI 2013
• New Works, exhibition award, Kreft Gallery, Ann Arbor, MI 2013
• Home Furnishings and Art for Your Apartment, SDAM, Brookings 2012
• 25 Target Gallery, juried, Torpedo Art Factory, VA 2011
• South Dakota Governors 5th Biennial, SD 2011
• Northern National, juried, Nicolet Gallery, Rhinelander, WI 2010
• Creative Adaptive, juried, Kreft Gallery, Ann Arbor, MI 2009
• Endle...