PORT ANGELES — Within each of his murals, if one looks close enough, a touch of Tim Quinn’s personality and sense of humor can be found.
Whether it’s a splash in the harbor caused by the user of a pier’s outhouse or the names and faces etched into hillsides, stumps and grass, the recently deceased artist always left something in his paintings for people to find and appreciate, say those who knew him.
Most recently, he left the menacing face of a vampire in the mural he was repainting at the Conrad Dyar Memorial Fountain at First and Laurel streets in Port Angeles.
“Tim did that with all his murals,” said friend and fellow artist Jackson Smart.
“It was just kind of his humor.”
Mr. Quinn was found dead Saturday in his Sequim apartment. He was 62.
The Sequim Police Department has said that the cause of death appeared to be natural. Officers don’t suspect foul play.
Artist’s murals
The artist had painted two murals in Port Angeles, two at Railroad Bridge Park near Sequim and another within the Sequim city limit, Smart said.
He was working on yet another mural in downtown Port Angeles at the time of his death.
He had painted that mural, “Olympic Visions,” in 1999.
Last summer, he began to repaint the mural, which blends scenes of Rialto Beach, Sol Duc Falls and Seven Lakes Basin behind the fountain.
The original painting began to peel several years ago after a sealant was improperly applied by volunteers.
Much like the first time he painted it, in the clouds Mr. Quinn placed the faces of presidents Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt who worked to preserve the Olympic Mountains and blended the names of people who asked him about the mural while he was painting in the foreground.
Nod to Twilight
But unlike the version he did 10 years ago, Mr. Quinn painted at least one vampire face in a nod to the best-selling Twilight novels, which are set in Forks.
“Just a few weeks ago, he had brought in snapshots for me of a vampire he hid within the trees in the mural,” said Kim Treneri-Mogi, manager of the Port Angeles branch of Dazzled by Twilight, which has its main store in Forks,
“He was planning on doing several,” Treneri-Mogi added. “It was for them [the fans] to enjoy.”
The four vampire novels have brought thousands of fans to the North Olympic Peninsula to see the sites mentioned in Arizona writer Stephenie Meyer’s books and depicted — although filmed elsewhere — in the two movies, “Twilight” and “New Moon,” that have been released.
Smart said his friend’s tradition of placing hidden treasures into his murals began in the early 1990s with the “Norman” mural, located on Railroad Avenue in Port Angeles.
Mr. Quinn painted it with Smart and another artist, Hank Krueger, who is now deceased.
“We were all working on it . . . and Tim said, ‘Look, this looks like some faces and stuff,'” Smart said.
What he was referring to was a hillside that inadvertently had human characteristics.
“He started doing things like that, and it continued on,” Smart said.
Mr. Quinn’s second Port Angeles mural, “Sluicing the Hogback,” in downtown Port Angeles, also contains several hidden images.
Most of them can be found in the far right side of the painting, which Mr. Quinn was responsible for completing. The rest of the mural was painted by Krueger.
A mural of orcas by Mr. Quinn was once displayed on the Sequim Co-op building but has since been removed, Smart said.
Smart said he hopes the things his friend hid in his paintings will help him be remembered.
“It’s a big loss to the community, a loss to his personal friends,” he said. “He was a character.”
Mr. Quinn’s friends and family are planning a memorial, Smart said, but a date has not been set.
No autopsy results
Sgt. Don Reidel of the Sequim Police Department said that although an autopsy was scheduled to be completed Wednesday, he didn’t know the results.
The detective who was in charge of the investigation was not on duty and was unavailable for comment on Thursday.
“I’m not sure if there was an official cause of death yet or what the results might be,” Reidel said.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
