Francis Tinsley RE

Francis Tinsley was born in Liverpool. UK.
Following foundation studies at the Laird School of Art, Birkenhead. Cheshire he was awarded a BA from Camberwell College of Arts and Crafts, London 1970 and subsequently was awarded an MA from Chelsea College of Art, London 1971.
Following this he worked at the Central College of Art, London. He became a Director of Tisiphone Etching, a part of Editions Alecto Publishing, London.
Most recently he was Senior Lecturer in printmaking at Camberwell College of Art and then course leader in MA printmaking before leaving in 2007 to concentrate fully on his painting and printmaking.
His work has been purchased by many private and public collections, including Ffylde Museum, Blackpool, Southampton Museum and Art Gallery, Ashmolean Museum Oxford, Newport Museum and Art Gallery.
He became a member of The Royal Society of Painter Printmakers in 2009.

Painters who use a lot of colour in their work are not necessarily colourists, for their pictures may still depend more on their ability to draw and to use light and shade than on the varieties of hue and colour intensity that they employ.  Just think how many paintings are photographed well in black and white without loss of depth or emotional impact.  Conversely, with colourists like Turner and Cezanne, black and white photographs of their work are often no more than an incoherent mess.  With  little stretch of the imagination we might believe that black and white photographs of Francis Tinsley's seascapes would meet with a similar fate. In actuality his pictures take us into a world of movement and change where even the light is transitory. 

Yet, as in the work of many genuine colourists, there is a tension between seeing a Tinsley painting as a flat multicoloured surface and seeing it as a scene which has depth and light.  This tension is accentuated by the way in which he builds his pictures from parallel planes of colour, which we see either as progressively receding into the picture surface or merely arranged on it, from top to bottom. It is as though we first see his pictures as flat surfaces before the spatial effect of contrasting colours takes us into his seascapes.  And this is the point: his use of colour does not just create depth; rather, the colour gradually draws us into it.  It is this characteristic that gives Tinsley's work a sense of intimacy, for we feel that he is not only looking at a particular seascape, he is also in it, and his work is an invitation to join him there.   

As with the great romantic painter, Turner, it is very difficult in Tinsley's pictures to distinguish between his commitment to close observation of his subject matter and his emotional response to it. Yet, we would be doing Tinsley an injustice if we did not acknowledge both aspects of his work. Ultimately it is his use of colour that enables him to do both, for our feelings cannot remain indifferent nor our eyes remain content to rest on the picture surface without being taken into a wholly believable world. Philip Hughes. Art historian and writer.

Philip Hughes.  Art historian and writer.