Cavalier Gallery presents Explorations, a series of large-scale acrylic on canvas paintings by Francine Tint. This exhibition provides an opportunity to take notice and ask, what attributes separate the masterful from the mundane, in a city that has placed gestural abstraction on the international art map. It comes as no surprise that the artists’ temperament plays a crucial role. Francine Tint is an artist who transcends skillful manipulation of materials to disclose the reality beneath the surface of everyday things. She imbues the works with her inner being by painting at the height of her emotions, to create a revealing catalogue of impulses and feelings that connect the canvases to enduring works of authentic artists through time.
Tint's character, her power, and ability to transfer various modulated states of being to her art, generate compelling energy via a panoply of techniques that fuse intention with intuition, seizing viewer attention with startling force. What is also surprising is the aura of air and light that radiates forth with luminosity from the unexpected juxtapositions of rich hues that are applied with big brushes, for the most part on large formats.
Tint's art combines generosity of scale with a sense of dramatic tension that captivates more than the eye. These immersive works do not leave the observer alone in a comfort zone. They engage the viewer with passion because Tint is not "going through the motions" or biding time. Her art and life are inextricably combined; they are one in the reality they inhabit, as the expression of a dynamic, assertive personality. Tint's paintings are not repetitious; they are not timid, they lead the viewer through the picture format with the vehicle of broad, articulated motions and fine points of brushed on or scraped away departures.
The works are inspired by nature’s palette at dusk, by the sky in its limitless variations and eloquent nuances. Mood and ambiance play a narrative role in the depth and poetry of the layered works that succeed in creating a sense of air and space, even volume, through the placement of forms and carefully chosen dominant and recessive color combinations. The pictures are alive with personal unconventional color contrasts, such as gold and lavender, and with the interaction of warm expanding hues of orange, yellow and red , opposed to cool enigmatic shades of signature lavender and black. Tint's primary colors are intersected with startling sweeps of strokes that evoke the effects of cymbals sounding or high winds whistling.
The jazz that resounds in Tint's studio comes into her consciousness, exposing her responsive interior life as she finesses tempestuous, optimistic works, portraits of Tint’s response to music and the unobstructed sky vistas that provide daily sustenance for discovery and wonder. A fluctuating, panoramic sky provides inspiration and a sense of exultation that seldom springs from views of man-made structures and buildings. Tint employs various materials, but the use of matte medium may diminish the immediacy of the surfaces. Her broad circular strokes coincide with short horizontal touches that ease the vehemence with counter-movements and alternative directions. Tint's painterly intelligence plays out in the complexities of various shapes and sizes, large and small, thick and thin, in paint that is fat and lean, yielding a measure of illumination for the observant viewer.
Tint worked for many years as a costume designer in film and television, with luminaries such as David Bowie and Ridley Scott, to name but a few. Her intense feeling for and use of color indicate she absorbed the "push-pull" legacy of the artist and teacher Hans Hoffman. In some of the smaller pieces, she makes textural surfaces with colorful impasto that form a virtual sculptural relief in a freshly shaped terrain. This untamed eloquence is above all an intuitive process, in every way a challenge to geometric, hard-edged minimal abstraction. The two forms occupy entirely different poles on the spectrum of abstract art as it is practiced today. Every day Tint finds new freedom and vibrancy to express her instincts as a painter making emotionally charged, strongly affecting articulate works.