Tim was prolific - beyond easy understanding. He created thousands of works of art during his lifetime. Sometimes working with his paternal twin brother Greg, often painting solo, he made book covers, movie posters, comic books, and calendars. "I am put in mind of Maxfield Parrish working with lasers instead of brushes" said author Alan Dean Foster of Tim's work.

It's hard to sum up Tim Hildebrandt in a few words, but if you look at his paintings, you learn much about him in a glance: that his imagination was inexhaustible; that he found beauty, color, and light of vital importance; that he viewed Nature as a magnificent cathedral.

The colors of Tim's art often has a piercing intensity. The brilliant Technicolor-like Cadmium reds and yellows seemed the perfect choice for a man whose imagination seemed to be permanently on fire. Publishers loved his ability to design vivid book covers with a striking visual impact; Author Harlen Ellison once told Tim: "I must have read a hundred crappy books because of your damn covers!". It's hard to look away from a Tim Hildebrandt image - hard to resist the desire to enter that world and remain there.

I got to know Tim in 1982 when he executive produced THE DEADLY SPAWN -that low low budget movie which we filmed with a few thousand dollars of Hildebrandt money. During the production, many of the crew found themselves posing as the mermaids, wizards, and dwarfs of the "Realms of Wonder" calendar images and Rita Hildebrandt's "Fantasy Cookbook".

Tim loved making movies. For him, there was no better way for time to be spent. During THE DEADLY SPAWN production, TIm painted monsters, built miniature sets, loaned us his money, his house, and his son Charles - who became the star of the film. In later years, Tim would talk about THE DEADLY SPAWN experience tirelessly anywhere, anytime, with the breathless excitement of a young boy describing his first day at "Disney World".

Tim's enthusiasm could be alarming - often seeming to be like a force of nature in its intensity and power. People loved Tim as much for his passion as for his extraordinary talent. His excitement could be addictive and it was exciting - and inspiring - to be around him when he was excited- whether he passion was about his current painting - or a unique cloud formation that he had spotted on the horizon. Tim was a cloud junkie. Volumes of cloud referance books filled his library and the bookshelves bowed under the weight of the tall stacks of "National Geographic" and "Arizona Highways" magazines. After moving to Texas in 2005, he often enthused over the spectacular cloudscapes of the open skies of San Antonio.

Tim Hildebrandt died June 11, 2006 of a staph infection at the age of 67. When I feel sad about loosing Tim, I remember how much of him is still here - in his paintings. Looking at his work today, I feel the same elation that I felt thirty years ago when I first saw his art: the wonderful feeling of living in a Tim Hildebrandt universe: a fantastic world of endless beauty, where nothing is ordinary and your worst problem is likely to be a dragon encounter - where fantastic creatures are bathed in luminous colors and dazzling light - where nature's magnificance is in every landscape, in every tree, in every rock, and in all the clouds that fill the sky.

As Alan Dean Foster said of Tim: "It's one thing to be a painter and another to be an artist."