Chris Lowrance interviews painter Tim Tozer on the occasion of the his exhibition The Visit on view at Groveland Gallery, Minneapolis, through October 17, 2015.

Tozer comments: "I’m excited about making paintings that accept all the limitations of paint and surface, and simultaneously try to make this stuff transform into qualities that paintings can only imply; movement, time, volume, light, etc. Of course time exists very clearly in painting, although in the opposite way to music or film; it’s telescoped into the structure of the work, and expands into its constituent elements only after the whole has been experienced. This is why it feels as though building forms and composing the painting are inseparable activities, and when those intentions part ways or lose touch, the whole thing collapses. When it all colludes to support the overall impetus of the painting, it’s done; this can sometimes happen in a surprisingly short amount of time, which makes the solution hard to trust. I think from early admiration of artists like Freud, Auerbach and Giacometti, I find it easier to trust something that comes from sustained struggle, although of course this is as arbitrary as any a priori standard one brings to bear."