“My mom was really good at art, and she actually taught back in the day. When I was in 8th grade, she taught art to my class, and I mean it was amazing,” said high school art teacher Tim Rempel when asked what inspired him to get into art. He claims his mom had a similar teaching style to Bob Ross, and he loved it. In fact, he feels that she was his main inspiration, but not his only. “My art teacher in high school was very influential and then of course my students”

Rempel has been teaching art for 42 years — 26 of those years have been at Brentwood, and the other 16 at Christ Community Lutheran School — but this year marks his last.  Although he is sad about his pending retirement, he’s also excited.  “I’m really looking forward to once I’m retired. I can actually make my art rather than just planning and doing little practice things for students to do.” He is particularly excited about a project involving cherry logs. Years ago, a friend of his chopped down a cherry tree. He’s been dying to carve them for what feels like forever. His plan is to first cut the logs up with the help of a chainsaw, and then he wants to turn them into either dolphins or whales and make them pretty detailed. In addition to wood carving once his retirement begins, he also has so many canvases  just waiting to be painted. 

As Rempel looks forward to more time on his hands to create art once he retires, he recognizes the value of having unstructured time when it comes to finding inspiration.

Rempel recalls how as a kid, he didn’t have a lot of friends in the neighborhood, and his closest neighbor was about a mile away, so therefore he had to entertain himself. “I’ve done a lot of things my parents probably weren’t too happy with, but I just had a lot of time on my hands because I was kind of by myself.”  Superheroes and skeletons were some of his favorite things to build and draw as a young child. He also claims he can remember all the way back to kindergarten. 

Now as an adult artist, Rempel loves all styles of art, but his favorite is mixed media, where he utilizes all kinds of media and 3D work. He also loves sculpting, wood carving, and acrylic and oil painting.

Rempel’s advice for those who are wanting to improve their art or simply be more inspired?

“Anything that you do in life, it’s all about practice and constantly being introspective,” he said.

When it comes to being a teacher he takes his own advice about reflection and improvement. “I keep changing up projects that I do with students because if they don’t like it, I’m not gonna keep doing it, I gotta find something that’s better.”