elliott templeton fine arts

I’m happy to have the opportunity to show some of my recent paintings at Elliott Templeton Fine Arts. I feel like my main job as an artist is to learn to be as open as possible. Open to myself, to the world around me, to my materials, and to my process. And the point of this is to create work which is in itself open and creates more space and possibilities. For me there’s really no inspiration there’s just work. I make a painting and I’m dissatisfied with it so I make another in which somethings get better but new problems arise. I plan the paintings out as a series of procedures. And I make them without thinking too much but also from time to time I stop myself and look at the painting more objectively because what I’ve learned is that the painting is often done before I’ve finished all my plans. They fail because I’ve overworked them never because I’ve underworked them. I’ve learned to leave the paintings in a place that feels awkward or kinda wrong to me. If I try and fuss with it and fix it I end up making it just like other paintings I’ve already made and never make any progress. Your eye and mind tend to hold you back and keep you making the same thing over and over again but your body can help you break out of this. That’s way my process is more organized around activities than ideas or images. These paintings start with a layer of white paint and on top of that I scrape my palette filled with paint across the surface. Then I take a brush and make marks into the wet paint mixing it as I go. Everything that happens happens on the surface of the painting. I often have this idea that I want to make every step of the process apparent to the viewer and the more I try and do this the more mysterious the process becomes but also interestingly the mystery is often what attracts people and pulls them into the paintings.   -Richard Tinkler, 2026