Francis Tinsley RE

To gaze out over water is to realize that everything is governed by change. Ships moving slowly across the horizon seem to be the only certainty. Even in painting nothing is certain until the last moment when a resolution has been made but even then one only has to return to it to see it was never fully resolved and the journey resumes. If the philosopher is right and everything is a metaphor then the sea allows us to speculate on all kinds of voyages both real and imaginary. [Francis Tinsley]

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Ghostly silhouettes are placed against an impenetrable wall of grey in ‘Early Morning Mist Manningtree’. The forms of two boats sit stationary amidst their sea of mist as if abandoned in space and time; the glimmer of the waters marbled surface emanating in luminescent swirls from their motionless bodies.

‘Distant Ship, Margate’ is a banquet of colour; the sky an expanse of warmest yellow with soft teal spanning the line of horizon. Shreds of orange rest upon delicate blue, while ribbons of gold acknowledge the suns soft presence in a smattering of glistening ripples atop the waters glassy surface.

Born in Liverpool, Tinsley completed his BA at Camberwell College of Arts and Crafts, London, before attaining an MA from Chelsea College of Art. Returning to his place of study, Tinsley taught printmaking at Camberwell before finally focusing on his own practise entirely in 2007. Now a member of the RE and with work in many prolific collections including the Ashmolean Museum Oxford and Southampton Museum and Art Gallery, Tinsley’s pieces continue to delight for their ethereal palette and poetic ambiguity.

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