Francine Tint: Radical Acts of Beholding

Upsilon Gallery is delighted to launch its exciting programme for 2025 with a showcase of the works of Francine Tint, an established American painter and one of the gallery's core artists, who embodies the spirit of Abstract Expressionism.

Running from early February to late March, the exhibition represents Tint’s debut in the UK and celebrates the painter’s remarkable career, while introducing her dynamic, gestural paintings to new audiences. 

Alongside Francine Tint, Upsilon Gallery presents a selection of contextualising works by abstract painters Larry Poons and Helen Frankenthaler, whom Tint cites as major influences, particularly in their use of bright colours.

Radical Acts of Beholding coincides with February’s season of connection and reflection and invites viewers to engage deeply with Francine’s art by transforming the act of looking into a profound experience of presence and transformation. An opening reception will be held at Upsilon Gallery in London’s Mayfair on February 13^th, from 6-9pm.

For 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 colour sensibility, and vary in size from 10 inches to nearly 20 feet. Her brushwork ranges from languorous and undulating swathes of paint to more agitated gestures. 

Her works speak of a powerful and unwavering commitment to the visual and emotional vocabulary of abstract painting and embody the artist's personal and deeply held belief in the power of intuitive creation. ‘Although she favours a forceful and sometimes-aggressive attack on the canvas, the aim is toward a kind of Zen perfection and calm in the end’ comments writer and curator David Ebony.

Now 81 years young, Francine's creative career began as a successful costume designer and fashion stylist - working for David Bowie and Ridley Scott amongst others – whilst painting at night. Today, she is a remarkable female artist whose contributions had been overlooked in recent years, until representation by Upsilon Gallery began to shed new light on her oeuvre, helping bring the overdue recognition she deserves. A successful solo show at Upsilon’s New York gallery has also been key to this process.

Working tirelessly to this day and still creating vibrant, boundary-pushing works, Francine Tint is a master of colour. Her work can be understood through the legacy of Abstract Expressionism, particularly the lyrical, colour-driven approaches of Helen Frankenthaler, whom Tint knew and admired. Yet her own work goes beyond the colour field, channelling this movement in ways that feel immediate, raw, and alive. 

“Colour should be a delicious shock to the eye,” Tint has said, and her works exemplify this ethos. They bleed colour - vivid and unapologetic - inviting an act of profound attention. Tint herself describes her process as ego-less: “I’m not even the boss. I let the painting do it for me.” This surrender to the medium results in works that feel intuitive and alive and whose rhythmic, gestural movements invite the viewer into a dynamic dialogue.

While rooted in the traditions of Abstract Expressionism, Tint’s work is deeply inspired by nature, water, and meditation. In her newest series, the use of thinner paint creates a fluidity that feels lighter but also demands greater precision, forcing her to think carefully about every decision. Water, such a dominant part of human biology, is a central influence, evident in the movement and transparency of these works. 

Tint also reaches further back into art history. Artists who are touchstones 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 colours 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 palaeolithic cave paintings, where she is captivated by their creators' profound identification with the animals they depicted, including handprints stencilled directly onto cave walls. The foot and handprints that appear in her paintings speak of this.

The monumental Heartbeat (2024) exemplifies her recent approach, with its dynamic interplay of scale, colour, and movement. The work evokes the rhythm of life, whether that’s people walking or buildings rising in Tint’s subconscious, shaped by her view from a penthouse overlooking New York City. It captures the energy of the city and the meditative stillness of her time by the water in the Hamptons, where she paints watercolours inspired by nature. 

The works Airlift and Cosmic Ray (both also from 2024) also embody a wondrous paradox. Though stationary, they seem to breathe and shift as the viewer engages with them. Their literature-inspired titles add a layer of poetic resonance, while the improvisational energy of Tint’s process - fuelled by her exclusive soundtrack of jazz - brings gesture and colour together in a rhythmic dance. In Springeth Green and Fire Dragon, for example, the interplay of vibrant hues and flowing forms evokes a visceral response, drawing the viewer into a dynamic visual rhythm.

Francine Tint’s work is sought after by both private collectors and institutions and is held in the permanent collection of over 28 museums, including The Neuberger Museum of Art, The Heckscher Museum of Art, The Portland Museum of Art (among the Clement Greenberg Collection), and The Krannert Art Museum. Francine continues to paint today, as well as conducting abstract painting workshops at The Art Students League of New York.