Timms commenced painting on canvas in the 1990s at Turkey Creek / Warmun in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
In 2002, a controversy that came to involve Timms, developed when writer Keith Windschuttle argued that claims made by some historians about the killing of indigenous people by white landholders were false.
Angered by Windschuttle and others' claims, Timms and several other artists including Paddy Bedford created paintings documenting the events recorded in their oral histories.
[2] Timms collaborated with former gallerist Tony Oliver and others to create Jirrawun Arts, a company established to assist the development and sale of works by indigenous artists from parts of the Kimberley.
[3] By 2007 the company had become one of a very small number of profitable, privately financed, indigenous-owned and controlled businesses operating in the field of indigenous art.