This is: "Please Smoke" by Tim Haley

Friday, July 17, 2009

St. Joseph artist Tim Haley admits that "Please Smoke" is just a still life with a clever name. And he thinks what's in the name helped get his work in the Kansas City Artists Coalition Regional Exhibition. "I wonder if it would have been picked if I named it 'Red Ashtray?'" Haley jokes. Like many artists, St. Joseph's Haley leads the equivalent of a double life. During the day, he owns and operates Tim Haley Advertising and Design. But away from that, he creates paintings and drawings as personal as his son and daughter walking through the woods or as provocative as "Suburban Taliban," a piece showing the hypothetical scenario of having conflict in the Middle East invade at our doorstep. "When we go to bed tonight, all we hear is crickets. In a lot of the world, all they hear is rifles and bombs," Haley says. "It's just kind of a reminder not to take our little world for granted." With his various works, whether he forces you to think or makes you feel at piece, it's a reaction he's looking for. "If you can pull out any kind of emotion out of anybody, you're winning," Haley says. Two of Haley's pieces are on display at the Kansas City Artists Coalition at 201 Wyandotte St., in Kansas City through Aug. 14.