Francine Tint

Interviews by Brainard Carey

Francine Tint In the Studio

Over more than five decades, Francine Tint has created a remarkable body of work. Her paintings display an exhilarating freedom of execution combined with an original and frequently surprising color sensibility, varying in size from 10 inches to nearly 20 feet. Her brushwork ranges from languorous and undulating swaths of paint to aggressive and agitated gestures. Her works speak of a powerful and unwavering commitment to the visual and emotional vocabulary of abstract painting, and they embody the artist’s personal and deeply held belief in the power of intuitive creation. ​

Tint’s direct heritage may be traced to Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting. Her admiration for those artists is enormous, but she also reaches more deeply into art history. Artists who are touchstones for Tint include Édouard Manet, Francisco Goya, Pompeian frescoes from the Roman Empire, and especially J.M.W Turner for his reliance on inspiration and radical painting techniques. She is particularly fond of 16th-century Mannerist painters; Jacopo Pontormo’s idiosyncratic colors and anatomical and spatial distortions fascinate Tint. She also has a deep interest in Asian brush paintings. Recently, Tint has been mining her books on paleolithic cave paintings where she is captivated by their creators’ profound identification with the animals they depicted, an identification which extends to handprints stenciled directly onto the cave walls. She is reminded of the foot and handprints that appear in her paintings. ​

Tint’s work has been exhibited in over thirty solo shows in the United States and Europe, and is in the permanent collections of numerous museums including the Clement Greenberg collection at the Portland Art Museum and the Krannert Art Museum in Chicago. Her work is in private and corporate collections including Pepsi Co. and Mount Sinai Hospital.

Francine Tint, Golden Flutter, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 54 X 39 in. (137.2 x 99.1 cm), Copyright Upsilon Gallery

Francine Tint, Impressions, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 52 1/2 x 36 in. (133.3 x 91.4 cm), Copyright Upsilon Gallery

Francine Tint, Impressions, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 52 1/2 x 36 in. (133.3 x 91.4 cm), Copyright Upsilon Gallery