Timothy grew up in Fallbrook, a small town north of San Diego, when avocados still covered the hills.

His father found beauty in his garden and expressed himself through the arts. His mother, an anthropologist, had a lifelong love of Mexican art. Timothy received an A.A. in Fine Arts at Cabrillo College, CA.

In 1974, Timothy bought an old-style Huichol yarn painting in Tepic, Mexico. He was inspired by a film produced by legendary ethnobotanist Peter Furst called To Find Our Lives featuring Ramon Medina Silva, a Huichol shaman artist. Ramon is recognized as the innovator that incorporated ancient symbolic representations of the gods and Huichol life into a more recent art form, yarn painting.

Timothy set out to learn this beautiful Huichol craft. He experimented with beeswax and piñon pine sap mixtures to spread on boards and intuitively embraced the technique of pressing yarns into the wax to create designs. Timothy learned through his readings of Huichol tradition that yarn painters undertook lengthy apprenticeships to develop their talents. A core part of their inner courtship of the old gods was the vision quest; to dream on long nature walks and to be connected to the sacredness of Nature. This became Timothy’s practice and his life’s creative expression; to retell their stories through sacred art.

His work is in art collections worldwide, and Timothy is recognized as a master shaman artist.

In 1987 Sarah Brightwood found Timothy and set him to work on the fourteen Circle of Angels yarn paintings for the newly built dining hall at Rancho La Puerta. These yarn paintings are based on the teachings in the Essene Gospel of Peace by her father, Edmond Szekely. For thirty years, ranch guests have been inspired by these works.

In the same year, Deborah Szekely found sudden magic in a set of prayer arrows that she received as a gift from Timothy. This led to weekly prayer arrow classes at the ranch.

On Thursdays and Fridays, find Timothy at work as if in his own studio, during lunch in the dining hall. Visit the many exhibitions of his art around the ranch and at Bazar Del Sol which are available for purchase.