#inform-video-player-1 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }

#inform-video-player-2 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }

On one of MaryBeth Timothy’s birthdays in Muskogee County’s Greenleaf State Park a wild deer gingerly approached her face for a big wet affectionate lick. That’s when her husband John Timothy II knew it wasn’t just his wife who likes the many creatures that run free and wild, the loving feelings are mutual. The Timothy couple are Oklahoma artists. He’s Muscogee Creek and MaryBeth is Cherokee.

The art they make is dissimilar from each other. Timothy’s style is often tongue- in-cheek pop. Think a mixed media cartoon picture of Pink Panther in moccasins. MaryBeth is inspired by the natural world and its living inhabitants. It’s not typical for wild deer to come close to humans. They may pause 40 yards away and gaze at us out of curiosity then bound off in an instant. To get a kiss from one is unheard of.

“It doesn’t surprise me that MaryBeth does wildlife art, its means a lot to her and apparently she means a lot to wildlife. This is the gal that deer will walk up to. Birds will fly to her,” Timothy said. “It’s really quite something to see. She can spot animals far before I can. She’d be an awesome deer hunter and I’m sure she’s cleaned her share. She puts a lot of detail into her art and she’s very passionate about her techniques. She will paint every individual hair on a bear. Wildlife is part of who she is.”

That conjured the image of Walt Disney movie character Snow White and her menagerie of helpful domestic critters.

“If I could only get them to do my housework for me,” MaryBeth said with a chuckle. “I put out a lot of hummingbird feeders and when they go dry the hummingbirds come to the windows. As soon as I go walking out with more my nectar here they come. We’ve taken care of possums and all kinds of animals.”

Together the Timothy couple operate Moonhawk Art LLC (moonhawkart.com). Norman’s Tribes Gallery, 512 W. Main Street has their original work on hand. Timothy is an award winning artist. He was a resident artist at the Five Civilized Tribes Museum and Cultural Interpreter at Bacone College’s Ataloa Lodge Museum and Center for American Indians. For 18 years Timothy served at Bacone as the American Indian Arts and Crafts Coordinator. MaryBeth has shown work internationally. Her pictures have been selected for numerous magazine covers and she was a 2019 feature in Rogers State University TV’s Cherokee Artist Profile series. A new gig has been book illustration. She’s had dozens of pictures published in both adult and youth books since 2020. The prestigious HarperCollins publishing house is among her patrons. Cherokee author Traci Sorell (“The Way of the Anigiduwagi”) is credited with bringing MaryBeth to this new facet of her career after she requested a single book illustration from the artist three years ago.

Both MaryBeth and John have been creative since they were children. Friends and family recognized their talents early.

“I was born an artist and have an artist’s personality,” Timothy said. “That doesn’t always click well especially in western Oklahoma.”

MaryBeth’s family was musically inclined more than visual art.

“Mom plays piano and I grew up with a lot of singing in church,” she said.

The pair take advantage of their divergent talents and proclivities to bounce ideas off each other.

“I’ll be working on a children’s book and something just won’t look right,” MaryBeth said. “So I’ll take a picture of it and send it to John asking what he sees in it. What it needs or what I need to change. He’ll give his opinion on it. Most of the time I take it, sometimes I don’t. But it seems to work really well that way. I trust him and respect his artistic eye.”

Timothy is the kind of artist who must wait for the muse to appear. As he phrased it, you can’t put a quarter in and expect art to come out.

“Sometimes the muse is there and sometime not but I’m always waiting,” he said. “If you go to work eventually she shows up. That’s how I roll more or less, it’s part of my artist’s personality. Most of my life I thought I was just a weird kid who didn’t fit for various reasons. I was fortunate at the Five Tribes Museum because I could focus in an artistic environment.”

After a chance encounter with a museum visitor who sent him a book in part about creative “right brain” personalities, Timothy learned to forgive himself for being the way he is. It also helped when museums and galleries began hanging his work alongside that of other well-established artists.

The couple are “Enrolled Tribal Citizens,” registered artists with the Indian Arts and Crafts Board and members of the Southeast Indian Artists Association. “Made in Oklahoma” is proudly displayed at their website. How each arrived at this point culturally is quite different.

“John was raised with a lot of Native tradition and culture within his family and I wasn’t,” MaryBeth said. “My mom got married to my stepdad who was German and we moved to upstate New York, Illinois, Texas and finally back to Oklahoma. I really wasn’t around any of my tribal people until I was an adult. I felt like something was missing, like a hole that needs to be filled. One of those was becoming an artist and the other was being around Native people and artists. Then I felt like I could breathe. This is it, this is my family.”

MaryBeth and John Timothy II will be at Norman’s Tribes Gallery for its 2024 art calendar signing event Nov. 18 and 19.

#inform-video-player-3 .inform-embed { margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px; }