Francine Tint is a New York-based painter whose career spans over five decades. Known for her powerful commitment to abstraction, Tint creates works that combine bold, intuitive gesture with a distinctive and often unexpected sense of colour. Ranging in scale from intimate compositions to monumental canvases nearly 20 feet in width, her paintings channel an immediate and emotionally resonant energy through sweeping, layered brushwork, at times lyrical and fluid, at others raw and rapid.
Rooted in the legacy of Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field painting, Tint’s practice is shaped by a deep engagement with art history. While she draws inspiration from the New York School, her visual language is also informed by artists such as J.M.W. Turner, Édouard Manet and Francisco Goya; the chromatic distortions of Mannerist painters like Jacopo Pontormo; the fluidity of Asian brush painting; and the primal symbolism of Paleolithic cave art. These diverse references reflect her longstanding interest in painting as a direct extension of the human gesture, what she describes as “the now.”
“I try not to think but to respond with immediacy and speed,” Tint has said of her working process. Each brushstroke, however spontaneous, is grounded in decades of practice, drawing upon both formal knowledge and lived experience. Her compositions are driven by instinct, memory, and a dynamic exchange with the paintings in her studio. For Tint, painting is a space of belief, an act of faith in the emotional and aesthetic power of abstraction.
Originally working as a successful costume designer and stylist, collaborating with entertainment icons such as David Bowie and Ridley Scott, Tint later dedicated herself fully to painting. Tint’s work has been widely exhibited in the United States and abroad and is included in the permanent collections of more than 28 museums, including the Neuberger Museum of Art, New York; the Heckscher Museum of Art, New York; the Portland Museum of Art (Clement Greenberg Collection), Portland; and the Krannert Art Museum, Illinois. She continues to paint in New York City, where she also leads abstract painting workshops at the Art Students League.