Francine Tint: Radical Acts of Beholding | Upsilon Gallery
By coincidence, the artist Francine Tint was in the gallery when I visited her exhibition. Supported by a walking stick and accompanied by two men called David, she was on her way to lunch. On her way out, she said that she hadn’t been to London for 52 years.
Tint owes an obvious debt to Abstract Expressionism, citing Helen Frankenthaler as a major influence. Back in the day, she was also friends and associates with Clement Greenberg, the critic who helped define the movement. Like Frankenthaler, she’s an evocative, airy colourist. AbEx is stereotypically macho. But both artists assert their femininity through the dreamy blurs of their strokes. And, in Tint’s case, in the occasional glitter and sparkle of gold and silver within her primary colour fields.
The Springeth Green (2024)
Looking at paintings like the one pictured above, alone now in the gallery, I found it hard to square their vigour and energy with the tiny old woman in the gallery who’d created them. And they were mainly new work!
But looking again, and there’s something meditative and considered about these thick, watery brushstrokes. It’s tempting to read into them a long lifetime of experience - those long years of practice that, eventually, took her to an unfamiliar city, to a new gallery, to lunch.
Francine Tint: Radical Acts of Beholding is at Upsilon Gallery (London). 06 February - 29 March 2025