New Mills Original | Tim Hensel

I have, as far as I can remember, always taken photographs. Photography brings together the creative and the technical in a way which appealed to me from an early age. While a large proportion of my work is still purely photographic, I have in the last few years become interested in developing certain themes further, through extensive digital manipulation of my images,as well as painting and sculpture.

I studied Biology at The University of York (1995-1998). I am fascinated with living things and have always had an affinity with science and nature. To me, art and science are closely connected in that both are concerned with the furthering of human understanding, and both appear to be limitless, multi-layered and fantastically complicated.

Much of my work is inspired by natural forms and structures, and exploring the interactions of people with both the natural and man-made environments.

This has led to an interest in the use of distortion and illusion in my work, representing in part the filters that exist between our consciousness and the physical world: if we create the world by perceiving it we need to describe it in terms of ideas and images we can understand. I also like the way in which these sorts of illusory images seem to interact with the brain directly, bypassing some cognitive function in a way which conceptual art might not. Visual art ought to be about how we see things, not just about how we think about them.