Bio | Marta Timmer Art

Artist Biography

Marta Timmer

Visual Artist based in Calgary

Marta Timmer is a Polish-born multidisciplinary visual artist, graphic designer, and illustrator based in Calgary, Canada. Her work blends glitching, digital collage, photo-manipulation, compositing, and selective use of AI tools to explore themes of beauty, emotion, memory, decay, and transofrmation as well as the invisible energies that lie beneath the surface of human perception.

With classical training in painting, drawing, and photography, Marta takes a multidisciplinary approach to visually conveying her concepts. Her works are often chaotic, detail-rich, and alive with colour. Marta's academic achievements include a Master of Fine Arts in New Media from the University of Lethbridge, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art (Photography) with a minor in Psychology from the University of Calgary, and a Multimedia Production Diploma from Lethbridge College.

Marta's work has been exhibited globally across both traditional and digital platforms. She has participated in art talks, presentations, and conferences, and has created several public art installations. She has also taught introductory multimedia courses for seven years at the University of Lethbridge Calgary campus. In April 2023, Marta achieved a significant milestone by selling her work at Sotheby's New York as part of the "Glitch: Beyond Binary" auction, and in May 2024 her work was featured at a Beeple Studios event in Charleston, USA.

Artist Statement

Current Practice

Using different themes and approaches, Marta explores the interplay of chaos and control. Through her work in the field of glitch art, she has experimented with two different processes. one based on glitch as a wild, disruptive agent, and one based on glitch as an aesthetic.

Whereas in the past Marta’s process was mostly based on finding glitches in the wild of the modern city, on screens and signage, and also provoking them in image and video files by scrambling the data, currently her approach is almost entirely based on digital collage and compositing.

She creates her artworks by combining pieces and fragments of old works, stock, AI generated subjects and textures, true and simulated glitches, and layers them together in a very controlled and meticulous way.

The second process is no longer about provoking a glitch but constructing an impression of one. Marta tries to imagine how an image could fall apart, and then she constructs it intentionally.