Rich Timmons
By Cynthia Marone
It is obvious to Rich Timmons when something is not only going to be special but a real game-changer. It’s a gift that has given him so much throughout his life, and he is happy to share the results with anyone who crosses his path. But first he occasionally needs to bring others around to his way of thinking. His wife, Julie, knows this firsthand.
In the early 1970s, Rich was working at a large design firm. The 24-year-old was hearing a lot of new ideas being bounced around, including one that kept coming up that was going to turn the industry on its head. A fast learner with keen powers of observation, Rich went home to his bride to share what he knew. His belief in the chatter was so strong, he talked about how selling their Philadelphia home was the next needed step, even while he continued serving in the Air Force Reserve and she continued working at a large law firm. She listened and had one question: “What’s a computer?” Rich recalls replying, “I don’t know exactly, but it’s gonna change the advertising world.”
He was half right: Computers simply changed the world — but they also quickly changed the young couple’s world. That computer launched Timmons&Company, a marketing agency Rich founded in 1974 and would eventually sell in 2013 and made it a digital superstar at a time when manually typed manuscripts were the norm. “It was the size of a refrigerator on its side. It was almost exactly what we sold the house in Tacony for. I believe it sold for $12,000,” the longtime Doylestown resident said of that first computer. “Fifteen years later, my employees showed me a tiny Mac. I saw something big in the marketplace, and it was a hunch and it was right. I was doing something totally different than my competitors.”
Rich has once again looked at the landscape, taken a hunch and turned it into something wholly unique. He has reopened and refashioned Rich Timmons—Studio & Gallery, which has been shuttered since 2018, as Rich Timmons Fine Art Gallery. He has taken the general concept of a gallery—opening nights with flowing wine, browsing clients, pieces of art hung throughout —and come back leaner and more targeted.
“This art gallery is a new model. I want to focus on large art, helping clients find art they want for a place in their house,” Rich, who will celebrate his and Julie’s 52nd wedding anniversary this year, said. “This is not a gallery you walk into and say, ‘I’ll buy it.’ It’s not an impulse buy, but a search. People come in with colors, patterns, spaces they want it in. I figure out what they are looking for and guide and direct them to a piece of art.”
The gallery is in the same 2,500-square-foot refurbished Doylestown barn as its previous incarnation but is now appointment only. Instead of 50 artists, Rich is working with only a handful—George Gallo, Christine Drewyer, Julia Klimova, Chuck Larivey, Holly Markoff, Dick McEvoy and Ursula Brenner. The artists, who also can be commissioned for a piece, create eclectic works that are mostly oils. One of the biggest changes, though, is the artwork’s size. “Most art is small, usually 20 by 24 or 18 by 12. Our prints are large, 30 by 40, and larger, around 92 by 64,” Rich, who served in the Air Force Reserve from 1968 to 1975, said. “These are statement pieces. With the seven artists and their collections, I have the bases covered.”
Starting out as a graphic designer and creative art director put art firmly in the commercial sphere for Rich. Though Timmons&Company had thrived, he and Julie started to find fine art creeping more and more into their personal lives and personal spaces. “My wife and I collected art, went to the Louvre [museum in Paris, France] and galleries all around the country, art festivals, always with an interest in art,” Rich, a graduate of the Charles Morris Price School of Advertising and Journalism in Philadelphia, said. “I made money in commercial art but enjoyed fine art. The transition was building.”
The new owners of Timmons&Company opted to move from the barn to Jamison. Though the gallery opened in 2011, the increased open space proved irresistible. The gallery quickly became a passion, but it started to pale in comparison to the harsh reality the couple’s son, Rich, was experiencing. “When our son got sick, the air got sucked out of our sails. You don’t want to sell artwork or help someone make a decision about good artwork. We didn’t have it in us. We just closed the doors,” said the father of, in addition to Rich, daughters April and Jill, as well the grandfather of 12 and great-grandfather of one. "Our life has Christian faith. We know he is in heaven with Jesus.”
In 2018, their son died of cancer at age 42. In the face of unimaginable tragedy, Rich and Julie healed through their devotion to their faith, which gave them comfort and inched them back into the world. Their church, which has included involvement in Bible study and Sunday school, and Rich’s work as an executive board member of The Pocket Testament League were lifelines during that dark time. A 127-year-old Christian outreach ministry Rich has been involved in since 1991, Pocket Testament League members distribute pocket-size copies of the Gospels of John to people they encounter in their daily lives. “They really supported us to keep us in the loop of life,” Rich, who grew up in Philadelphia, said. “After two years, we started to come back and wanted to do something in our community. As I do things with the church, Pocket Testament League or the gallery, it’s part of healing and it’s OK.”
When Rich was at the marketing firm, he realized helping people was something he liked to do, whether it was someone on his 15-person staff or a client that walked through his door. Yet there was a point when the man who now finds fulfillment in art, faith, family and community did not know himself at all. He remembers a 27-year-old who was unhappy about the man he had become.
About a year in at Timmons&Company, Rich’s employees walked out on a Friday — Good Friday, to be exact. The mass exodus left him without a single staff member when he returned to work on Tuesday. At a loss, he even thought of pleading for God’s help. That is, if He existed, he recalls thinking at the time. Working in His well-known mysterious ways, a man came in looking for a job as a graphic artist late Tuesday morning. Rich hired him on the spot. “Joe came to work each day. His wife brought him lunch, and they would read the Bible. I started to ask him questions, and there were things in the Bible I had never known before,” Rich said, pointing out he is a 1967 graduate of Northeast Catholic High School in Philadelphia. “Little by little, I started to believe. My life changed. I’m not the man I use to be — I’m not the man I want to be — but I’m not the man I use to be. I see growth.”
Rich’s powers of observation, whether about a cool tool at work or noticing a couple sharing sandwiches and Bible passages, followed by positive action have led to a life of giving and helping others. The avenues may vary but the goal, he said, is always the same. With his new approach at the gallery, he will get to do it more and more. “I’m the matchmaker,” he said. “I connect art with clients that makes everybody happy.”
Rich Timmons Fine Art Gallery is at 3795 Route 202, Doylestown, PA. The gallery can be reached by phone at 267-247-5867; by email at rt@3795gallery.com; and on the web at www.3795gallery.com or www.facebook.com/3795Gallery.