Fort Worth Artist Fulfilling Biblical Vision

Michelangelo talked about seeing an angel in the marble—he just had to carve it out.

For artist Tim Hogan, his angel is most often a Longhorn.

“Let me explain a little bit, I’m making the hair for the animal,” he said while taking a break from carving a giant wood structure outside his Fort Worth home.

Tim makes his living carving and painting these life-like cattle out of wood.

“What you want to do is get the final product to look as spectacular as possible, as dramatic, as powerful,” Tim said.

His medium to do so is most often a tree being born again. “There’s a real pretty, pretty piece here,” he said while walking around a large pile of various shapes, sizes and colors of wood. “What do you see when you look at a piece of wood?”

Tim sees potential. He used wood to build his art studio, where inside he’s completing a composition.

“Put a little Beethoven on and I’m in another world,” Tim said while classical music played in the background of his studio. “I’m not a composer, but I am a composer of wood and paint.

The composition he’s close to completing first came to him as a young man.

“This painting sat dormant but I knew—I saw it in my mind’s eye, but I knew it had to be painted.”

This painting came to him in a vision. A fear of failure delayed his start until five years ago, and he needed every minute of the last five years to get it finished.

The painting on canvas is approximately nine feet wide, and almost 12 feet tall. To place around the painting, Tim carved a life-size wolf, baby lambs, two pilgrims and even a bench to sit on.

Every square inch of this massive project has a spiritual purpose.

“130 names of Jesus carved into the frame—interior, exterior,” Tim said. “The cloudy night is because all of mankind carries so much baggage, but the light of God shines through.”

Tim hasn’t always been so well-versed on religion. He admitted to being a wild man in his younger days while painting in bars and traveling the West. But his life changed dramatically after he started studying the gospel.

“A week after I was Baptized, I stood in a pulpit of a church and I said, I found it!”

Tim found the rock to base his life around, and he also found the meaning behind his vision.

“And it says in the scripture . . . and an angel of the Lord stood before them,” Tim read aloud from his bible.

His vision was of the proclamation of Jesus’ birth.

“I just wanted as an artist to take a shot at depicting something that’s amazing,” Tim said.

He doesn’t have plans for the painting, he just knew he was supposed to paint it.

“I really wanted this to be something special because it’s for His glory,” Tim said.

When it’s finally finished, he’ll have to use those carving skills once again. “I’ll have to cut the wall and take the wall out,” in order to get the painting out of his art studio.

But after five years of work, and a lifetime of thought, what’s one more day.

Tim can be reached at his website: http://www.paintingandcarving.com/.