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
AA Adverting Design, PA Professional Art Certificate, Spokane Falls Community College

• South Dakota State Universty Faculty Exhibit, Ritz Gallery, Brookings, SD 2025
• 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 2024
• 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, Rhineland...