Timothy Young, art professor at Grace College, has a display of artwork through May at Warsaw City Hall, 102 S. Buffalo St. Hours are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays. Locals may have also seen Young’s large, 5’x7’ painting of buffalo, which is displayed at Kosciusko County Convention and Visitors Bureau. (Photo by Rebekah Whirledge)

If a trip to Warsaw City Hall is in your future, linger in the hallway near the elevator for a few minutes. While there, it’s possible to step outside of Indiana into the wide prairies of South Dakota, or the stormy shores of South Carolina. Through May, the artwork of Timothy Young will be on display, showing oversized views of many colorful, drastic landscapes.

Young, studio art and art history professor at Grace College for the past 17 years, has put together the display at city hall to show several aspects of his artwork with a common theme: exploring light.

“Storm Front,” the large painting of a scene from Myrtle Beach State Park, shows not only an explosion of light from the sun in the foreground, but an explosion of darkness from an approaching storm in the background.

Other oil paintings show the trees of Young’s own back yard in Warsaw to the desolate landscape of Badlands National Park.

In 2006, Young was selected as the Artist in Residence at Badlands in South Dakota, after becoming initially intrigued with the West from time spent on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

“View from Old Northeast Road,” oil on canvas, 30×40 inches

“I spent four weeks trekking over buttes, gullies and wide prairies, drawing and painting in oil and watercolor,” he explained. “This (painting) was a specific location I returned to a number of times. On this particular afternoon, the prairie grass in the foreground, small mesa in the middle ground and the slow rising pinnacles in the background, along with a majestic sky backdrop, epitomizes my Badlands National Park visual experience.”

In 2011, Young published a 40-page coffee table book of selections from his residency in the Badlands. It’s available on blurb.com for purchase, but can also be viewed in its entirety on his studio blog: timothywyoung.blogspot.com.

Currently, Young is focusing on commissioned paintings for site-specific projects. Using a photo taken during a patron’s trip to Utah, Young is working on a large landscape to be displayed in an office building.

“I don’t replicate photographs exactly, but I use my own style to capture the feelings and emotions of the scene,” he said.

“View of the Backwoods,” oil on canvas, 18×24 inches

These days, he is also creating more abstract paintings by focusing on small fragments of larger paintings to replicate abstract areas of color, brush strokes and forms.

Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Young’s work has been exhibited and featured in various galleries, colleges and cultural centers throughout the U.S. He became interested in art at a young age, freelancing on the East Coast and even drawing for Archie Comics for a time before receiving his MFA from Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio, and studying at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain.

He, his wife Anne, three daughters and a son (seen as subjects in much of his work) live in Warsaw.

Young can be contacted at [email protected] or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/timothywyoungstudio.