Latest / Military Broadcast Radio | MBR Talk / Conversations With A Vet -Timothy Colomer - Marine Veteran

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Conversations With A Vet -Timothy Colomer - Marine Veteran · Military Broadcast Radio | MBR Talk

1:08
Hello. Don't adjust your screen.
1:11
Don't switch off the screen. Stay right where you are.
1:15
This is conversation with a vet, with a guest host.
1:19
My name is Travis Parrington. I'm a Marine Corps veteran, host
1:23
of OM Radio, and Carol Lee is part of my podcast community and
1:29
she is on assignment and asked me to fill in for her.
1:33
So a really special treat for me to join you all on a Sunday
1:37
night here at Conversations with a Vet.
1:41
And thank you for being separate, gummy, a little
1:43
flexible. I was almost exactly 35 minutes
1:46
behind today. So we have a 735 start, not a
1:50
7:00 start, but we're here. And I'm with Timothy Columer,
1:56
another Marine with a very interesting story.
1:59
Tim, welcome to Conversations with the Vet.
2:02
Well, brother, it's #5 appreciate it and I and I thank
2:05
you for being flexible and getting on here with me today.
2:07
I've been looking forward to this for a while.
2:09
Absolutely, absolutely. Carol Lee is a is a super
2:11
awesome Marine. Mom Times 2, a fantastic talent
2:15
has a great thing going here and I'm excited to tell your story,
2:19
learn more about you, and hopefully I am up to Carol Lee's
2:23
standards. We'll see here.
2:25
Let's find out. And hey, you know what?
2:28
I don't know who your Barber is, but looks like my Barber and I
2:31
like to shine man. Yeah, I just, I just buffed it
2:35
up for you. I threw a little wax on there.
2:37
Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
2:40
It's a good look. Your origin story I I want to
2:43
find out about who Tim is. What made you decide to go into
2:48
the Marine Corps, Tim? Oh wow.
2:50
I, I didn't do it for a whole lot of reasons that a lot of
2:53
people do patriotism and motivation and service the
2:57
country. I frankly, I wanted to travel.
3:01
I wanted to go see the world. I I just just my senior year of
3:05
high school, gone on a, a retreat with my school.
3:10
I had a pretty well to do school and we went down to Costa Rica
3:14
for, for a week. And that was the first time I'd
3:16
ever left the country. And and I was just blown away
3:20
with with the people, the culture, being outside of my own
3:23
kind of comfort zone and seeing what the rest of the world look
3:26
like, meeting the people, eating the cool food, going to see
3:31
jungles. I've never been to a jungle
3:33
before. I mean, the darkest, deepest of
3:35
of Florida, maybe seen a couple alligators, but you don't see
3:40
beautiful birds flying around and and and sloths hanging from
3:45
trees. And how are monkeys in in in
3:47
Orlando. So is is definitely traveling.
3:50
And I got, I got plenty of that in the Marine Corps.
3:56
They do that to us. Yeah.
3:58
You're there everywhere. Any climb in place.
4:01
What was your MOS in the Marine Corps?
4:03
When I started the Marine Corps, I was aviation ordinance and and
4:06
that's putting bombs, rockets, missiles together, put them on
4:09
helicopters. I worked in fixed wing for a
4:12
little while and then rotated at my first duty station was Japan.
4:16
So like right out of the gate I got my travel Iwakuni, Japan.
4:20
There's an Air Station there. I, I, I moved from there after
4:24
my first year to Marine Corps Air Station New River, which was
4:28
a Rotary wing. There's a little bit different
4:30
flavor, but, but basically kind of the same, you know, air wing
4:34
operations to me ran like, almost like clockwork, like an
4:38
FAA kind of situation, which was cool.
4:41
And it has to be like that for safety reasons and make sure the
4:45
birds get out there on, on the, on the flight line safely.
4:48
But it didn't feel like the Marine Corps to me.
4:51
Not, not the way it was advertised.
4:53
The, the morning formations and the Moto runs and all of that,
4:57
The hump in your gear. It was more like a nine to five
5:01
job where you'd clock in, clock out.
5:04
And it just, it didn't suit me. I, I wanted to do something a
5:07
little bit different and be in an aviation ordinance.
5:10
I was exposed to EOD, the explosive ordinance disposal
5:13
guys. Every once in a while we would
5:16
have to call them up and I just really like the opportunity.
5:19
I was re enlisting for I think my second time in EOD.
5:25
You had to be a Sergeant, you had to have, you know, X amount
5:28
of time on a contract. So I re enlisted for a lap move
5:31
to EOD and man, I was grateful I was able to do it.
5:35
It was it was an amazing program.
5:38
So aviation, you know, I was in the air wing, I didn't air
5:42
defence, but it it is a different world.
5:47
Like I try to tell people like the the air wing marines, we are
5:49
not like our our brothers and sisters.
5:52
We're a different breed. Now when I think of EODI, think
5:56
of that movie that that was out a couple years ago about that.
6:02
Yeah, yeah, that one Hurt Locker.
6:05
Yeah, Locker man, it gets a lot of bad, a lot of bad lip from
6:11
EOD technicians. But I got to tell you, Mark Boal
6:15
and and Kathryn Bigelow actually came out to Virginia post post
6:21
release of the movie is about probably a week.
6:24
And they actually gave us in person a sneak peek to the
6:29
company I work for called AT Solutions and some people from
6:33
the EOD Warrior Foundation asking our like a real opinion.
6:38
And Mark Boal, the guy that I think he wrote most of the
6:40
movie, was embedded with EOD. He went different army units and
6:45
he picked up the stories that eventually made it.
6:47
I know there's a little artistic license there and and we don't
6:50
sneak out of the wire and go on our own missions.
6:53
But as far as reality is concerned, yeah, there's some
6:56
artistic license. But I think what they really
6:58
captured was the intensity of the job.
7:02
It might not have been technically accurate, but the
7:05
intensity of the job and then coming home after being on for
7:10
such a long time, that feeling of like, oh crap, who am I now
7:16
and what do I do? I think Jeremy Renner standing
7:18
in front of the cereal aisle where you're like, I used to be
7:22
in charge of a cordon and life and death situations.
7:24
And now I'm picking out Apple Jacks or Cheerios is like
7:28
completely diminishes a a person in that instant.
7:32
And, and I thought that was probably one of the most
7:34
captivating parts of the movie. Well, one thing I I did want to
7:39
ask, there's pressure there. And because your enemy is
7:45
figuring out all kinds of inventive ways to kill you.
7:49
Literally. Yeah.
7:51
And and the the the landscape's always changing.
7:55
The threat landscape is always changing.
7:58
I always wanted to ask, how do you EOD professionals adapt to
8:03
different things being done, especially now?
8:06
Like like they didn't have drones back in our day and now
8:09
they have drones doing EOD, you know, kind of stuff and attacks.
8:14
How do you adapt? In real time, it was my my
8:20
partner actually wound up being a pretty famous guy, Mike
8:24
Burghardt. I'm not sure if you know the
8:26
know the name that you recognize the picture.
8:28
It was the Mourinho detect that got blown up and gave the the
8:31
bad guy the middle finger. He was he was my partner for a
8:34
while. Yeah, Yeah.
8:35
Great guy, awesome dude. I think he summed it up the
8:38
best. It was it was a game of cat and
8:40
mouse. We'd go out there and defeat
8:42
him. They changed their tactics.
8:43
We'd go out there to feed them, we'd change their tactics.
8:46
It was a lot of information sharing between platoons.
8:51
Hey, I've seen this in this area.
8:53
It might be migrating to your area in your battle space, but
8:56
it was in real time and, and unfortunately what Well, maybe
9:00
fortunately there were such low tech devices that we were able
9:05
to keep up with them pretty well.
9:07
But also the low tech angle. We didn't really, we didn't
9:12
really train for that. When I was in EOD school, when I
9:15
was in EOD school was pre 911 and EOD, the IED, you know, part
9:21
or phase of school was pipe bombs in the United States, some
9:27
IRA stuff for car bombs. We didn't really get into it
9:30
that sophisticated of a level and it was more pass or fail
9:34
like, yeah, you get the gist. You, you read the book.
9:38
So, so you're trained, but post 911 when these guys started
9:43
really, really heavily using IEDs, we had to just adjust in
9:46
real time, figure out what they were doing, You know, without
9:50
getting too granular, in the United States, the FBI put
9:53
together along with the Department of Defense, kind of a
9:57
task force, Task Force Troy along with.
10:00
Let me see. It was, I can't remember the
10:04
exact acronym off the top of my head, but it was the, yeah, the
10:10
Terrorist Explosives Device Analytical Center.
10:12
It's a mouthful, but it was basically the FBI that was taken
10:16
evidence that we collected on the battlefield into their lab
10:21
looking for a hair trace evidence, fibers, fingerprints,
10:26
DNA, so they can wrap up the bad guys.
10:28
We actually had a pretty sophisticated system of not only
10:33
capturing the bad guys, but capturing the evidence, because
10:37
through that refugee program they could be coming into the
10:39
United States and the material that we collected could stop
10:43
them from doing that. Now, as I understand it from you
10:48
know, what would Curly has sent me to study, You know, I got
10:53
out. I didn't serve in combat and I
10:54
got out, you know, for medical reasons.
10:56
A lot of people get out but but you're you, you've suffered
11:00
injuries serving in in overseas and I don't want to go into it
11:06
too deep unless you want to, but.
11:08
I don't mind. OK, so you, you, you get
11:12
hingered you, I mean in an explosion.
11:14
Yeah. And yeah, that changed your
11:17
entire life. It did so the, and, and I've
11:22
actually gone out on multiple podcasts and talked about this
11:27
because I, I'm, I'm such a big advocate for us guys and girls
11:31
getting the help that we need. I was in a vehicle that was
11:35
designed for EODII, don't remember the nomenclature.
11:38
I think it was the MRAP, but basically it was this yeah, the
11:42
MRAP. It was this big, big old tank on
11:45
wheels essentially. And it had this V shape hall
11:47
underneath the bottom of it. So if something blew up, it
11:50
would take the path of least resistance.
11:52
If you had a flat bottom, you know, it was pretty catastrophic
11:55
with that V shape hall. It would, it would direct the
11:58
blast outward, but it, it, you know, explosion is explosion.
12:04
And we were driving out down an unimproved road and literally
12:09
the guy that I relieved in place told me, Hey, if you go down
12:12
this road, take your vehicle first.
12:14
Usually would have a security truck in front of us, Humvee
12:18
turd gunner, that kind of that kind of thing.
12:21
And as we're going down that road towards it, my driver who
12:25
I, who was my partner, EOD partner, he's like, hey, we're
12:28
going to go out first. He's like Rodger that that was
12:31
the plan. And as we're driving down that
12:33
dirt Rd. there is a Daisy chain of, of explosives post blast
12:38
assessment. The guys that did it told me it
12:40
was a couple 15 fives. This is a big round and it, it
12:44
detonated directly on the passenger side of the vehicle.
12:47
So you can imagine one up front under me and then one in the
12:51
back almost in like an ambulance jump seat that we had back there
12:55
was my corpsman. And when it hit, it hit so hard
13:00
that I was ejected up. I hit my head on the inside of
13:03
the the armored vehicle and then came back down to my seat.
13:07
We all got knocked out. I mean, that was instantaneous.
13:10
But the injury that I had suffered was because of hitting
13:14
my head was a traumatic brain injury, compressed spine, a
13:18
couple other internal internal things that blast wave.
13:23
It moves through liquid medium twice as proficiently as it does
13:27
through the air. So you can imagine it just
13:29
compresses and compresses and compresses and the the head
13:33
injury, the traumatic brain injury, I hit my head with such
13:37
a force. And you'll, you'll appreciate
13:38
this, brother. I broke my Kevlar in half.
13:42
Like it had a crack right down the top that I didn't realize
13:46
until I got over to over to supply and turned it in.
13:50
And the guy removed the cover off of it and insisted they get
13:54
a broken or missing gear chip from the Sergeant major.
13:57
And I was a gunnery Sergeant at the time.
13:59
And I just thought that that was too cute.
14:01
I explained to him what was going on.
14:03
He's like, oh, yeah, you're still going to have to go get
14:05
one of those. But yeah, those that was the
14:07
extent. That was the extent of how I got
14:09
injured. And kind of the cascading effect
14:14
was not being able to speak very well.
14:18
I've improved on that stuttering word finding and word finding is
14:23
interesting. You we've all been in the
14:24
position where we're having a conversation or like I got the
14:27
word right on the tip of my tongue and you can't think of
14:30
it. Usually it's a word you don't
14:32
use very often. I was struggling with words like
14:36
the but a yeah, yeah, exactly. So.
14:40
So a conversation like that took a little bit longer for me.
14:44
I also lost and I wouldn't say I was illiterate, but I lost my
14:48
ability for eye tracking and reading, like going from left to
14:52
right, next sentence, left to right.
14:53
And and I would go from up here to down here to going backwards.
14:59
So I literally, I had to retrain my brain and it took a couple
15:02
years, but I like doing hard things.
15:06
So I leaned into it and I decided to go get a master's
15:10
degree because of a glutton for punishment.
15:13
What was that like going back to school, not just for an
15:18
undergraduate, but a master's degree, trying to recover from
15:22
this, the situation that happened to you and just heal
15:25
physically all at the same time? Intense.
15:30
But I think Marines are really good at intensity.
15:33
We're really good at, at picking the hard battles and, and
15:36
leaning into it, shouldering through the rough times, asking
15:41
for help when I needed it. And I had to ask a couple
15:43
professors, you know, hey, this is what's going on with me.
15:46
I'm not asking for any, any kind of, you know, leniency, but just
15:51
work with me a little bit. What was most interesting for
15:54
me, though, was it was a, a master's degree in Homeland
15:57
Security. So a lot of talk about terrorism
16:00
and home Homeland Security issues and stuff in the, in the,
16:04
I don't call them kids, but you know, they're 2324 years old.
16:08
And I was a guy that just got back from fighting terrorists.
16:13
And they just, we had a small cohort and they all just kind of
16:17
came together on, on the stories I was able to tell and, and the
16:21
missions I was able to bring the bad guys that we fought and it
16:26
made it, it made it a really positive experience.
16:28
It was, I would say it was fun. I I love learning, especially
16:31
about stuff that is interesting to me.
16:35
So you, you get your master's degree.
16:37
But all this time, I mean, you, one of the big things that I, I
16:41
saw about you is this, this passion almost for art.
16:48
Was that something you developed, you know, in the
16:50
Marine Corps, after the Marine Corps?
16:52
Or was it part of your healing? It was, it was years later in in
16:57
high school, I joined art club, I went to AP Art.
17:00
But I got to be honest, it was because of the girls.
17:04
It was just straight up. To be completely transparent, I
17:08
was interested in art when I was in high school, but there was
17:11
that gap between 1993 all the way up until 2023, three years
17:18
ago, where I wasn't creative at all.
17:20
I didn't do anything. I didn't paint, draw, sketch.
17:24
I wrote a little bit every once in a while creatively.
17:27
But in 2023 and my son, he was talking about it today.
17:32
It was Christmas vacation for him.
17:34
And at the time he was pretty young.
17:36
I think he was 9 or 10 and he was 10 years old.
17:40
And I was shopping with my wife, Christmas shopping.
17:43
And we know how that goes in December.
17:45
It's a pretty, pretty condensed group of people at Ross.
17:49
And I'm not a big fan. So I was like, honey, I'm going
17:52
to take my son over to, we'll take the boy over to, to
17:55
Michael's. I remember when I was a kid
17:57
going in there, they had stuff aside from the ark.
17:59
They had, you know, models for kids, little Mustangs you could
18:04
put together airplanes and stuff.
18:06
And my intent was to get him that and just during a school
18:10
break for for school, maybe not playing video games 8 hours, 10
18:15
hours a day. Maybe we do something a little
18:16
creative hands on, spend some time with dad and he picked out
18:21
one thing and he's like, what are you going to get?
18:24
Because I almost picked out a paint by numbers.
18:26
I was like, I could do better than paint by numbers.
18:27
Let me see what I can do. So I bought a, a small canvas
18:32
and I painted what I knew, which was low to the ground at the
18:36
time. It was starry night in the
18:38
background. And in the foreground was a
18:41
painting called the Scream. And then it replaced the guy in
18:44
the screen with the guy in a bomb suit.
18:47
Because I, I thought it was apropos that when, when you're
18:49
in a bomb suit, dude, you were got, you got blinders on.
18:53
I mean, you were absolutely focused on the mission.
18:56
So anything that's going on the background you got to depend on
19:00
on your partner, on your security team to be able to
19:02
cover down on that. And that was the feeling that I
19:05
got in that painting was all this wild stuff is going on in
19:08
the background. But there's that dude standing
19:11
in the bomb suit like, all right, what do we got?
19:14
And and I didn't have social media at the time.
19:18
It wasn't my intent to be like, I'm going to push this out and
19:21
share it with people. I shared it with a couple of the
19:23
UOD brothers of mine and they're like, holy crap, dude, you
19:26
actually got something here. So I made another one and
19:30
another one, another one. And.
19:31
Just slop you right there, Timothy.
19:32
Yeah. Did did the crayon jokes come to
19:35
the fore anytime before or after this?
19:39
I have had so many crayons sent to me, candy crayons.
19:43
I've had boxes of crayons, the one with the old sharpener in
19:46
it, and I wasn't even in during that time.
19:49
I left in O Seven. So the crayon thing I think was
19:52
a couple years later. Like there were no crayons when
19:55
I was in. No one believes me.
19:56
Like there was, there was none of that.
19:57
OK, OK, Nah, but you could. But but but.
20:00
For marine, you can color in the lines and make it look somewhat
20:04
good. Yeah, I was trying better.
20:06
Than me man OK so you do that and that first one goes out and
20:11
they and they're like hey man, this is pretty good and you you
20:14
you didn't did it again. I did it again and and I leaned
20:18
into the the, the old classics that you might, that you might
20:22
know. There's a painting in, in the
20:25
beginning of the movie Ferris Bueller when he's walking
20:27
through Chicago and he's with his girlfriend and they're at
20:29
the Museum of Art. And it said gigantic pointillism
20:33
painting where a guy used just dots to paint this Sunday
20:37
afternoon in the park. And I did a little research on
20:40
Sunday afternoon in the park and I replaced one of the characters
20:43
with a guy in a bomb suit. And then the next one after that
20:46
was another, another master's piece that I tried to emulate by
20:50
putting another guy in a bomb suit.
20:52
And I just, I just kept building off of that until I started
20:54
getting the creative, I guess, desire to make my own.
21:00
And that's when I, I approached some, some folks at the company
21:04
that make the bomb suits and they sent me a bunch of of
21:08
material for reference, photos, videos, I mean, you name it.
21:14
And I just, I just leaned into the bomb suits.
21:17
I actually did a, a pretty unique in the Marine Corps.
21:20
We had exactly 50 guys, exactly 50 guys that died from the
21:24
beginning of Iraq and Afghanistan until post the war
21:28
where my friend Dave passed away because he had some fragment
21:32
frag still left in his body. So I decided I'm going to, I'm
21:37
going to make one bomb suit for each one of these guys.
21:39
It's going to be nameless. It's going to be faceless.
21:42
We don't know which one is which and is be kind of a project to
21:46
honor their commitment and their sacrifice.
21:50
Well, that took off. That literally went viral.
21:53
And last year I wound up getting I think around 210 commissions
21:59
to make bomb suit drawings for other EOD techs, not just in the
22:03
United States, not in our military.
22:05
Most of it was, but I had Canada reaching out to me.
22:09
People in the Uki had a guy in the Ukraine reach out to me, be
22:13
like, can you please do a picture for a unit?
22:16
And that's when I was like, man, I might really be on to
22:19
something here and, and lean to it even a little bit more.
22:23
And, and now it's just, I'm almost to the point where I can
22:26
make this full time, although I do enjoy my day job.
22:30
I I think I could by the end of 2027 potentially turn this into
22:34
a full time, full time gig now. Timothy, what is your your day
22:39
job when you're not doing this art?
22:42
I'm corporate security for a major oil and gas pipeline
22:45
company. Without dropping names,
22:47
basically I'm a liaison between our company and the Department
22:51
of Justice. So we're critical federal
22:54
infrastructure. And if there's an attack on our
22:56
pipeline, our pipeline goes to military bases, airports, your
23:01
home. If you got natural gas in your
23:03
home, there's about an 80% chance my company supplies the
23:07
pipelines to it. And you'd be shocked.
23:09
There was a guy that wrote a book, it was about 5 or 6 years
23:13
ago, literally called How to Blow up a Pipeline.
23:16
And he's an environmental extremist.
23:18
And they made that into a movie. You can get it on Netflix or
23:22
Hulu. I'm not advertisement.
23:24
I'm just trying to, to, to capture what, what's going on
23:26
in, in my world. And at the end of the movie is a
23:29
call to action. This guy thinks that if we don't
23:32
take action now, then the world's going to end because of
23:34
greenhouse and all that other stuff.
23:36
And regardless if you believe that the guy was calling,
23:39
calling to action people to go sabotage pipelines, put bombs on
23:44
them, shoot at them, do whatever you can to stop, stop the
23:48
mission. And that that wound up, you
23:51
know, kind of kicking off a tour with me, the only bomb squad guy
23:55
in the pipeline industry bound up going to different
23:58
organizations. The Department of Justice has
24:02
the Office of Bombing Prevention with Homeland Security.
24:06
I did a couple of webinars and live talks there.
24:10
The International Association of Bomb Technicians has an annual
24:13
conference. I got to do a speaking
24:15
engagement there and it wasn't, it wasn't telling guys how to
24:20
disarm bombs. It was more here's the hazards
24:24
that are associated if, if you have a bomb on a pipeline, who
24:28
do you call? How do you turn it off?
24:30
If something does detonate? What are the hazards talking
24:34
about exclusion areas and downwind hazard zones and things
24:37
like that. It, it's interesting and, and
24:39
you'd be shocked how many times our, our infrastructure gets
24:43
attacked on a regular basis in, in the Permian highway in North
24:47
Texas. There is actually a guy that put
24:50
out a, a big cooler of Tannerite.
24:53
And if, if you're not familiar, it's an A&B mix that if you
24:56
shoot it with their high power rifle that blows up.
24:58
Well the guy started shooting bottle rockets, had it and then
25:02
roaming candles and then somebody called the police and
25:05
as the police rolled this dude up, he was grabbing a
25:08
high-powered rifle. So the threat is the threat is
25:12
real. I just, I didn't know much about
25:17
that. I remember watching some of that
25:19
series, Land Man, we were talking about, you know how you
25:23
know, it's protected. There's people watching and the
25:27
kind of people you don't want coming after you Are you, are
25:31
you doing anything else? Because now I understand as
25:33
you've gotten your art out there more, you've been able to
25:37
collaborate with other groups, other people you know about your
25:40
art. What's that been like, Tim?
25:43
It's been fantastic. The, the, the reception has been
25:45
overwhelming. There's a few industry groups
25:49
that are out there and I mentioned one, the International
25:51
Association of Bomb Tax. We have another one here in the
25:54
United States, United States Bomb Technicians Association,
25:58
the EOD Warrior Foundation. Overseas in the UK, they have
26:02
what's called the Felix Fund have all kind of brought me in
26:05
as a resident artist where I, I make pieces for them to donate
26:10
for, for their charity auctions and things like that.
26:13
But also here locally in Houston, I'm a big, I'm a big
26:17
animal fan. I, I, I love animals, not just
26:21
dogs and cats and, and pets, but like big ass old school
26:26
primitive animals. And I, I had an opportunity.
26:30
I have a painting in a movie and one of the one of the people
26:34
that participated in the movie had a had a dog in the movie,
26:37
little actor dog. And we got to meet and I found
26:41
out they were running an organization called Bears,
26:43
Etcetera in Huntsville, TX, where they go out and rescue
26:47
animals that are either ran through the illegal fur trade or
26:51
they like big cats like that TV show where they just couldn't
26:56
handle them anymore. And they go out and rescue them,
26:59
they rehabilitate them. And then if they can be let back
27:02
on the wild, they let them back out in the wild.
27:04
But if they can't, they find, they find proper sanctuary and
27:07
care for those animals. So it's, it's been awesome being
27:11
to help help out organizations like that.
27:14
Is is is unique, especially as an artist?
27:19
Now one of the groups that I want to ask about was the Artist
27:23
in Arms group I. I didn't I I know there's
27:26
veteran groups for artist. I work do some work with Cavarts
27:30
for example. Oh cool.
27:32
But it appears, if I got this right, you're part of Artist in
27:37
Arms. I, I am and they're relatively
27:42
small group, small Co work. And, and it was founded by two
27:46
Marines, husband and wife. And, and basically it was kind
27:52
of to bring together veteran artists here in Houston and we
27:56
tried on a national level. It's a little bit more difficult
27:59
when you expand out that size. But yeah, they, they do things
28:03
like instead of FOBS, they have a forward operating art
28:08
installations where they were, pardon me, they work with
28:11
galleries to get our work up over there.
28:14
I've done, I do live painting shows, so almost as like an
28:19
entertainment facet, I'll go to an event and paint a painting
28:23
there in an hour and then people will watch and gather around.
28:26
So they've given me opportunities to do that, which
28:30
in, in some giant capacities. The Cynthia Woods Pavilion is,
28:34
is our, our one of our biggest amphitheatres here in the
28:38
Houston area. And last year during 4th of
28:40
July, as you walked in, I was painting the Statue of Liberty
28:45
and had a lot of really cool interactions with people, great
28:48
conversations with kids. And it, it, it advocates not not
28:54
only just for art in general, but veterans in the art space.
28:57
There's not a lot of us it, it all.
29:01
It's all kind of relative to, to the person, right?
29:04
And there's just not a lot of veteran artists.
29:06
So being able to be in a group like that and kind of share
29:10
creative energies was was really, really cool for me.
29:15
I wanted to ask if you would talk to me about painting.
29:17
Now look, you know, Tim, the these, these aren't hands.
29:21
These are mitts with fingers attached, right?
29:24
And you know, I'm trying to hold I, I got a little Wacom tablet
29:28
just for, for grins and I thought I'd do this and I'm
29:32
trying to keep in the lines and man it, you know, some people
29:38
say, well, how hard is it to paint?
29:40
You just throw some stuff up there and it's all on the canvas
29:42
and paper and you're done. But I'm finding out that, you
29:46
know, it's, it's work, hard work.
29:51
It's really like finite skill to, and we're not even talking
29:55
about the different strokes and techniques to make the, the art
29:59
come alive. Like what is it that people
30:03
don't know about art? There's a lot more chemistry
30:08
into it than you could possibly imagine if Oh yeah, wow.
30:13
The chemistry is it's unique to art.
30:16
And it's not just mixing of the different, the different colors
30:19
or the different pigments, but it's also if you, if you got a
30:24
tube of oil paint, and I got 1 here handy, if you had a tube of
30:29
oil paint, it comes in this little, this little tube here,
30:33
right? Well, this is just pigment and
30:36
that's all it is when it comes out.
30:38
It's got the consistency of like dried up toothpaste.
30:41
It's really, really thick and hard to work with.
30:44
So you use what's called a medium.
30:46
And I happen to use linseed oil and you dip your brush in the
30:50
linseed oil, you mix it up a little bit in the paint.
30:52
Some people use turpentine, mineral spirits.
30:55
There's a lot of different, different variants.
30:58
Back in the old days, the masters actually used to use egg
31:01
yolk. The, the fattiness from the egg
31:04
yolk mixed with the pigment delivered this really, really
31:07
cool, cool texture and, and different values.
31:12
And, and then it's, so you got the chemistry part, but it's
31:15
also where you live. I live in Houston and brother,
31:18
it is humid here. So inside my studio, I have a
31:22
dehumidifier, I have an air conditioner, I have a fan
31:24
overhead. Now the, the materials that I
31:28
use are, are they're not off gassing, they're not vapor
31:31
producing like I've got to be an open studio or open air.
31:35
I'm very, very familiar with, with, you know, chemicals
31:40
breathing stuff. But that, that would be the, I
31:45
think that was the trickiest thing to learn was, was
31:49
literally how do you make the, the paint stick to the canvas?
31:53
Because if you don't do it right way and you probably there's,
31:56
there are there art museums all over the world that, that
31:59
they're, some of their more famous artwork is going through
32:02
a rehabilitation process because it didn't, it wasn't executed
32:07
properly. So that process could take
32:10
5101520 years. But you don't want your
32:13
paintings literally falling apart.
32:15
And then it's and then it's understanding the different
32:18
colors and the values, shadows, lights and darks and how you can
32:23
use colors to manipulate not only what the painting looks
32:27
like, but literally how it makes people feel.
32:30
Which is just tripped me out that I could take two of the
32:34
exact same. I'm, I've done this before as an
32:36
experiment where I take two of the exact same images and I
32:40
paint this one with this type of palette and this one with
32:43
another and they're wildly different, exact same image,
32:48
just different colors. And, and there's a psychology to
32:51
it that if you learn the psychology, you could really
32:54
make an impact. I want to ask about that because
32:57
what you're saying is, you know, beauty's in the eye.
33:00
Behold, that's the old saying. You're literally saying that
33:03
things like color and and texture, you know, are going to
33:09
evoke a certain reaction from somebody, a certain feeling from
33:13
somebody, that psychology is an art just in itself.
33:17
Yeah, yeah. And in learning, learning the
33:21
kind of basics of that type of psychology really helps an
33:25
artist kind of influence the the feeling of the person.
33:28
And, and I got a couple examples.
33:31
I know this is might be a little unprofessional, but I'll, I'll
33:34
move my camera. I've got these dogs in the
33:36
background that I finished here recently.
33:39
Bright colors. They're they're they're intense
33:42
looking there. This one's this one's a
33:45
gangsters type dogs where where they're, they're cops from the
33:48
20s and they're going to go out there and book them.
33:51
Dano lot of bright colors. Well, on the other side, I'm
33:55
doing this Winston Churchill piece for for my friends in the
33:59
UK and it's darker and the values are different.
34:04
And I and I used a little bit of a different color palette and
34:08
it's a lot more serious. It's a dog smoking a cigar,
34:11
which should be damn funny, but you can kind of feel the weight
34:15
in the figure and in the character because of the colors
34:18
I used. Had I put him in a bright yellow
34:21
or red or orange suit, completely different, completely
34:24
different feel. But this is heavier feeling.
34:27
It's kind of more grounded. And when you could manipulate
34:31
colors, it could be a very, very slight deviation in in a single
34:36
color, or it could be just wildly different.
34:39
You you could really manipulate the way people perceive it.
34:44
And that's used in advertising all the time.
34:47
It's used on TV and in movies. It's it's powerful one.
34:50
Of the reasons I'm kind of geeking out over this is, you
34:53
know, I'm wearing video editing and color grains.
34:56
The thing I'm starting on now and you know, 1 shade can throw
35:01
your project in a completely different light and the viewer
35:04
has to be the colors have to write the guide the viewer
35:08
through the story. I, I mean, I, I never thought of
35:11
it that way before because and I like black and white films, but
35:15
I can see with that, you know, the shading, you've done it.
35:19
It is, you know, that dog smoking a cigar because there's
35:22
some he's carrying some serious weight.
35:25
It's Winston Churchill. Yeah, Yeah.
35:29
The, the, the interesting thing about about this one right here
35:32
is it might blow your mind is that is only one tube of paint
35:36
aside from the red. That is one color that through
35:40
dilution I was able to lighten it up with the oil.
35:44
And it it of course is it comes out of one pigment.
35:48
But because I diluted it a certain amount with with the
35:51
oil, I use the background canvas to show through instead of
35:55
adding white, which actually tints it a little bit of a
35:58
different color. It kind of looks dirty, but if
36:01
you use the same color, you just diluted a little bit and then
36:04
you layer on thicknesses over the top of it and just layers as
36:08
it dries, you get that type of effect.
36:10
It can take a long time. This one, I'm on 6 months this
36:14
painting because I'd I'd layer it, I'd have to dry, layer it,
36:17
let it dry, layer it, let it dry, and I'd probably give it
36:21
another three or four months and I'll be done with it.
36:25
But then oil paints themselves could take between 12 months, 6
36:29
and 12 months to completely cure before I even go to the
36:33
varnishing stage. So.
36:36
So the lead up for an oil painting if if you Commission
36:39
one can can sometimes be a year. Well, does it also explain why,
36:44
you know, I go to some art galleries and let's just say a
36:47
pain is like, you know, that size is $4000 and you know,
36:52
someone is saying, well, that's just impossible.
36:54
But by the time you got the number of hours you put into the
36:57
materials, 4 grand is not too bad.
37:01
No, it's not. It's actually reasonable what
37:04
you're talking about. Some of the pigments that I
37:06
have, I I use pigments specifically from a company
37:09
called Old Holland and Old Holland goes back, I want to say
37:14
to the 15 or 16 hundreds. This company has been around
37:17
making pigments for masters and some of the colors that they
37:20
have are this, this size 2 can cost 7 or $800.
37:26
Now, this size 2 will last me almost a lifetime, but it's the
37:30
initial investment that I have to make that if somebody's
37:32
asking for a very specific piece of work with a very specific
37:36
feeling, I've got to get the right materials for them.
37:39
Canvases like the one over my shoulder between 120 and $150.00
37:45
depending on the manufacturer, just for the canvas brushes for
37:49
15 to 20 to $30 each for one brush.
37:55
The medium linseed oil and all of the things that you have to
37:59
get are relatively expensive. I mean, compared to our crayons
38:05
that we used to eat, no. It's, it's, it's interesting to
38:11
me with all this digital art out there and you know, I, I'm
38:16
playing around the Wacom Tau because I just don't have the,
38:19
the wherewithal or patience to do what you do.
38:23
But it's interesting to me that in all the digital AI world, the
38:28
human being still wants to, you know, get close to what you
38:33
create with texture and even touch the canvas and feel that
38:38
art come to life. Do you think you'll ever see a
38:41
time where digital is this the only way where we still want to
38:45
have those hand drawn paintings? Actually, right now the art
38:49
world is blowing up because of AI.
38:52
People are so sick of, of mass produced imagery that it's got
38:56
no soul that my my profession and, and being a professional
39:02
visual artist, people are lining up and it's not a pat on the
39:07
back. It's not just me, but I know
39:08
some great artists that are abstract expressionist,
39:12
photorealistic people are are small group, if you will, of
39:19
professionals. We have people lining up and and
39:23
it's not inexpensive work that that they're buying.
39:27
I just did AA33 panel series is called a triptych in the art
39:32
world and it was watercolor and I sold it for $11,000.
39:38
That's that was my entry price for that because of the amount
39:42
of time and everything. So yeah, people are lining up
39:45
brother. It's a great time to be an
39:46
artist do. You have a website, Tim.
39:50
I do, I've got a couple. I've got Little Dog
39:53
artstudios.com. That's more of my commercial
39:57
site where I sell everything that's framed ready to hang.
40:00
You just pick something out, pick the color of a frame and
40:03
it's ready to go. But then I have my flagship
40:06
product is Timothy Columer Fine Art, and that's that triptych
40:10
series that I was talking about where it's three panels.
40:13
I also really like storytelling, so the three panels will tell a
40:16
story of of. Whatever a person wants.
40:21
I've I've done stories for families, for people that are
40:25
moving. I'm doing one for my brother of
40:27
his son growing up in this different stages.
40:29
I've got a really interesting piece right now that you'd
40:33
appreciate called Time, Distance and shielding.
40:36
And it's three women, Joan of Arc.
40:38
There's a, a famous Russian female sniper from Cold War era
40:45
and then a, a female in a bomb suit.
40:48
So I've I've kind of bridged the, the gap of time and then
40:52
distance with the sniper and then shielding with the bomb
40:55
suit, which is how you survive radiation, which is an, an
41:00
unseen enemy, which to me, our terrorists and our bad guys in
41:05
Iraq and Afghanistan, they were those unseen enemies.
41:07
So it's it's part storytelling at the same time.
41:11
So ladies and gentlemen, I put some of the links in the chat
41:14
here. You can check out his art.
41:17
I can tell you one of them, I mean I'm getting down over is 11
41:22
with the the skulls in them or with the campfire.
41:26
That that one was for a good friend of mine.
41:29
And that's actually a story in itself.
41:31
So my take on that, my take on that is that's what the apostles
41:36
would have felt like after the after Judas kind of abandoned
41:42
Christ. There's 11 left, there's 11
41:45
skulls in there. And it's a very heavy painting.
41:48
And and that's my story of of kind of how that betrayal, what
41:52
must have felt to them. That was a big one.
41:57
That's three feet by three feet. That was like those.
42:00
That was a lot of fun too. And HR Geiger is one of your
42:03
influences. Big time.
42:07
In fact, I've got an original back there behind my canvas.
42:12
I've, I've got a huge collection of, of Geiger.
42:15
He, he's in my bedroom, he's in my halls.
42:19
He was, he was super collectible because he, he only died a few
42:23
years ago. Salvador Dali too.
42:25
A lot of people think he was an old master.
42:27
Dolly died in like 8485. Picasso, He was alive through
42:33
the 70s. I mean, some of the artists that
42:35
that we're all very familiar with, we were alive during the
42:38
same, we're walking on the globe at the same time.
42:41
It's, it's, it's interesting to see where their influences come
42:46
from and kind of how they influence, influence other
42:49
artists. So one thing that, you know, as
42:53
we kind of start winding down that I wanted to, you know, talk
42:57
to you about is I meet a lot of veteran artist, music, pottery,
43:03
spoken word, graphic artist, fine art, you, you name it.
43:07
I mean, and, and you're right, there's, there's more than you
43:11
would think, but not nearly as many as people would think.
43:17
So for a lot of veteran artists, what I hear is it is extremely
43:21
difficult for me to even get motivated to put my art out
43:25
there and I don't know how to get started.
43:31
What should a veteran artist do to either get their art out
43:35
there or find other veteran artist?
43:39
Well, Cav Arts is is a great place to start.
43:42
Artisan Arms is a good place to start your local Chamber of
43:46
Commerce, believe it or not, if you have one in your.
43:49
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because there's so many
43:54
different connections there of people in different industry.
43:59
If you just put the word out, you're going to find somebody.
44:04
I I think we're in a good place in the United States right now
44:06
where a lot of people enjoy and respect and want to help
44:09
veterans. So just making a simple
44:11
connection is easy. You want to you want to know an
44:13
artist, here's their phone number.
44:16
Get a hold of them. Tell them I told you to, to
44:18
call. But I, I thought the simplest
44:20
way for me was just easy entry into social media.
44:25
I'm not running ads or, or anything like that.
44:27
I'm just sharing my work and, and, and collaborating with a
44:31
few people that I know. And it just comes naturally.
44:36
There's an artist that's out there.
44:37
He's also an art critic. But I really liked what he said
44:40
is, is you don't create, Don't create for other people, create
44:43
for yourself and then find your people and you will find them
44:47
eventually. You're talking about how many
44:50
billion people are on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok.
44:53
Eventually if you put out enough art, they'll find you and
44:58
they'll start following you. I think I've only been doing
45:00
this for three years and I'm up to about like 16,000 people.
45:04
That's kind of a, that's kind of low numbers when you talk about
45:07
like giant creators. But for me, that's comfortable
45:11
it, it means I don't have to, you know, spend hours and hours
45:14
and hours a day responding to messages or whatever.
45:17
I've got a small cohort of, of, of followers, return customers
45:22
and clients. That's good enough for me.
45:25
And also, when you start out, don't read the comments.
45:30
Don't do it. Don't read the comments.
45:33
You're going to get shit on. I'm sorry.
45:35
I don't know what kind of if that's all right or not, but
45:38
it's absolutely true. Don't read them.
45:41
Don't worry about them. They're they're a lot of them
45:43
are bots. A lot of them are just people
45:45
that are jerks. And you'll find your people
45:48
eventually you'll be they'll they'll be sick of picking on
45:50
you and you'll just weed them out.
45:52
And I think that's another matter thing.
45:55
It's another military veteran thing.
45:56
Like people are trying to get over on you and trying to like
46:00
get you set off. So it's it's like, why?
46:03
Why even bother with it? Don't read the comments and just
46:06
put out what you like and eventually you'll find your
46:09
people. It, it sounds like intentful
46:12
consistency is, is the is the foundation for anybody out
46:18
there. And you know, I'm not in the
46:19
kind of artwork you do, but I can certainly, you know, agree
46:22
that you're right, you know, because, you know, I've been
46:25
doing, you know, my show for a long time.
46:28
And you're right. I met Carol Lee because I was
46:33
out there and found my people, you know, in in the work that I
46:37
did. You're doing all this now and
46:41
and you still work a full time job.
46:43
You're a husband, father, parent.
46:47
You got this artwork you're doing.
46:49
I got to asked him. I mean, what else is what else
46:51
is going on? What else is next?
46:55
On December 11th of this year is my 20th anniversary of getting
46:59
Blown up and I'm releasing a book called Going Ferrell.
47:02
And the book is kind of my own journey.
47:09
My story, very, very small amount of it before I go into
47:12
the Marine Corps, kind of set up character development, kind of
47:15
give you a picture of who I am at 17.
47:18
A little bit about Iraq. Some of the stories, some of the
47:21
the horrors of war, what real combat looks like.
47:24
Long periods of boredom accentuated with intense
47:28
conflict for about 10 or 20 minutes.
47:31
Some of the terrible things that happened in war, not just to our
47:35
people, but just people in general.
47:37
And then and then I, I focus in on the actual incident about
47:41
getting blown up, what it feels like, what I heard, what I saw,
47:44
how I felt. And then getting out of the
47:47
military, like literally the next year, I, I punched, I was
47:52
out and I was completely lost. I lost my identity.
47:56
I was institutionalized. I didn't know who I was.
47:59
And it took me the better part of 20 years through all of these
48:01
types of therapy to finally discover not what my purpose
48:05
was, but who, who, who I was. My purposes remain somewhat
48:12
static over the past 20 years. Take care of my wife, take care
48:15
of my family, be a good provider.
48:18
I did that in the Marine Corps, right?
48:19
So that that was already embedded in the kind of part of
48:22
my character and, and, and my core values already.
48:26
But you strip away that, you know, 14 years of being on
48:29
active duty, waking up at a set time, going to bed at a set
48:33
time, PT every day, you, you lose something.
48:37
And, and I think it's, it's really important for, for people
48:40
to understand that that haven't been in that kind of position.
48:44
And the in the book, it's great for first responders, nurses,
48:48
doctors, lawyers, anybody that's been in the position where
48:50
they've been doing the same thing that identified that it's
48:54
what they identified as and then it disappears.
48:58
Who are you now? What do you do and how do you
49:00
figure it out? Going feral December 11th on
49:05
your 20th anniversary. Yes, Sir, to the day.
49:09
To the day it will be out on Amazon, Yeah.
49:14
Yep, I've got, I've got two different versions I'm putting
49:16
on Amazon. 1 is a paperback version, you know, entry level
49:21
to to get into a book and read about it.
49:23
And then I'm doing 100 special edition and this will be a
49:28
hardcover with some extra art that's in it that was
49:32
specifically derived from the combat operations have been in
49:35
more photos and those will be hand signed by me with a
49:40
certificate and maybe a little bit something extra.
49:44
Well, I wouldn't be a good host if I didn't say Curly.
49:47
Would love to have you back on when the book releases.
49:50
A talk with you, Tim. I'd love to, that'd be a lot of
49:53
fun. Sure, and and make no mistake,
49:55
she's a lot better looking than I am.
49:57
So you, you'll get additional treat there.
50:00
You know, you know, Tim, for me, we had to be super gummy today
50:04
to make this happen. Really appreciate it.
50:06
But also it really embodies a veteran experience.
50:09
So many times, you know, people come up to me and, and think all
50:14
veterans are broken. And I'm like, well, some of us
50:16
are some, I mean, some of us have some serious miles on us
50:19
over the years. But then, you know, I really
50:22
enjoy getting to tell the story of the veteran who, you know,
50:26
Yeah, you, you, you got seriously injured.
50:29
I'm. I'm grateful that you're alive
50:30
here with us today. But you took that and turn into
50:33
something beautiful and you've impacted people's lives like
50:37
this. It's just really nice to see.
50:40
I appreciate it, brother. Thank you.
50:42
And, and, and I'd love to come back on because some of the
50:45
stories that it, I hadn't been able to talk tell today.
50:48
I, I think are pretty, are, are pretty meaningful.
50:51
And, and they have had cascading effects in people's lives.
50:54
And it's, it's shocking to me, to be honest, that the people
50:59
have called me up and told me, man, your painting has changed
51:03
me. And that's a true story.
51:05
And and I'll I'll share with Carol when, when I come back in
51:08
December. Well, I think you, you know,
51:11
again, we're, we're in different lanes, but you know, I've had
51:14
that happen, you know, meet somebody at a conference or at
51:19
a, at a, at an event. Hey, you know that story you
51:23
told had an effect on me? And it, it, it makes you stand
51:26
still, doesn't it, Tim? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
51:30
I, I made this painting and I'll, I'll make this real quick.
51:32
I can give it a little legs. I made a painting called called
51:35
War Dreams, and it's on my site. And, and War Dreams is this guy
51:39
that's waking up in the middle of the night.
51:41
It's black and white. He's thrashing around in bed.
51:44
He looks terrified and this female Marine calls me up.
51:48
She said, hey, I, I really connected with this painting of
51:51
yours. And we got to talking.
51:54
She was a shut in. She was an alcoholic.
51:56
She lost touch with her family. So I thought I'm going to make a
52:00
painting for you then. And I made this painting of this
52:03
this female warrior kind of cutting through all the bull's
52:07
ass in in her life, big swords raised up really intense
52:11
fighter. And I sent it to her and she
52:15
literally told me that that got her into a rehab program,
52:19
reconnected with her family, got her from out from underneath
52:22
being a shut in. And I'm still talking to her.
52:25
She's doing amazing. And it was just art it it was
52:28
unintentional consequences of just painting of just being
52:34
creative and and putting yourself out there.
52:37
So if if people are apprehensive about it, don't be.
52:41
You are going to connect with somebody, somewhere, somehow.
52:45
It's just being what you said. Deliberate, deliberate
52:48
persistence. You know, that's so powerful
52:51
because, you know, some people can't articulate why pain is
52:56
important or why art is important.
52:59
You know, as you know, art's very rarely taught in schools
53:02
anymore. It's it's hard to learn art.
53:06
But, you know, I think without art, you know, we're not really
53:08
human anymore. I agree in in kind of my
53:13
tagline, and I wouldn't call it a motto, but kind of the tagline
53:16
from for my studio is, is when, when words fail, art speaks be
53:23
because you, you, you could really, you could capture
53:26
something that's an emotion that you could never convey to
53:29
anybody through words and let them understand it.
53:31
They just won't. But if they're visual people and
53:34
you see it on canvas or you see it as a sculpture, it it, it's
53:39
powerful and and they get it almost instantaneously.
53:45
This is a great way to end the day.
53:47
It's been a pretty good day, Tim.
53:48
I want to thank you so much. And again, folks, sorry, you
53:51
know, I was a little late. You know, I, I needed 28
53:55
minutes, couldn't find it. What Tim was super Gumby Marines
53:59
are and we made this happen. I'm filling in for Carol Lee for
54:03
conversations with a vet. I am not the host, but I am so
54:06
grateful to be able to talk with you.
54:09
So again, I've got links in the show post or you know Tim's art
54:15
how you can contact him. I know Carol Lee will be hitting
54:18
you up when December 11th hits. I'm excited to read your book.
54:22
I've learned a whole lot tonight.
54:24
So that's it folks, Conversations with a vet with
54:26
your sit in host Travis Parrington from OM Radio.
54:31
Carol Lee is on assignment tonight, but she's in the chat.
54:34
And thank you so much. We're going to sign off now.
54:38
Tim, thank you and I look forward to your book.
54:42
Semper Fi brother, it was a pleasure.
54:44
Super Fidelis, it's a pleasure. We are out.
54:46
Have a good weekend. Hi, I'm Beaker with Military
54:52
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55:14
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