Tamara Timmer

TASTE OF LOVE

How can you search for something that is incomprehensible? For me, faith doesn't begin with certainties, but with the act of searching. A desire to approach something beyond our understanding. For me, Jesus is central to this. Not as an idea or a religion, but as a living person who gave himself out of love. A love that is patient, vulnerable, and unconditional.

As a creator, I, Tamara Timmer, work extensively with oil paint. The medium helps me portray my search. I often work without underdrawing; the image emerges as I work, like a writer discovering their story through writing. In this way, the painting process forms a physical path of searching and questioning for me.

My graduation project arose from my search for who God is to me. I no longer wanted to hide anything, but to look honestly at my own vision: how I see Him. Creating helped me to shape that search, not in ready-made answers, but in images that attempt to capture a glimpse of the unspeakable, of what words fail to express.

Together, the works form a single story. Not a story about me, but a story about a love that reaches beyond words and images. A love that doesn't impose, but invites. A love that became visible on the cross and still cries out: "Come."

My hope is that you see Him. Not just in the image, but through it. That you experience something of His nearness. This work is not an endpoint, but an open space. A place of encounter. A place where seeking is sacred. Because there, in that seeking, true discovery begins.

You can read countless books about love.
Page after page.
Dedicated to someone or something.

I want to put love to the test.
I want to capture it in words, or even in sentences.

What can I do to test love?
Can I climb mountains to see love from a distance, or travel the world and meet all the right people?
Shall I search everywhere and leave no stone unturned?

What if love can't be found?
What then?
What kind of test am I doing then?

I'm afraid to discover that love can only be found with YOU, but even more afraid that it isn't.

Your love was there from the beginning and never went away.
I can test that love.
Golgotha showed me that.

The love that cannot be stopped or doubted, that never fails.
Page after page, YOU have written about love that was there long before I was.

You love person after person.

Will I ever understand it?