Richard Tinkler
works exhibitions news about
New paintings and drawings
November 7 - December 19, 2026
Opening Reception: November 7, 6-8pm
exhibition text
Moskowitz Bayse is pleased to present New Paintings and Drawings, an exhibition of new works by New York- based artist Richard Tinkler. This presentation marks the artist’s first with the gallery, and will be on view November 7 - December 19, 2026.
Long known for intricate compositions alternately meditational and kaleidoscopic, Richard Tinkler may be thought of a pattern-master for whom optically charged and heightened chromatics serve an ongoing experiment with vision, his and ours. Tinkler’s engagement with art is very much a daily practice, a continuous flow of activity in which he is both conductor and observer. Every drawing leads to another, lines radiating out from a central point as if, once set in motion, self-constructing, almost organically, a mandala. Every painting leads to another, echoing by way of visual vibration in the space between them. Something like a harmonic convergence occurs in his work. It’s plain to see, and within the fiction of painting, seeing is believing.
The blurring and wavering that animates these more recent paintings may be thought of as an abstract post-Impressionism, although how abstract are they? Look closely. You’ll notice where the brush left each mark, constellations of them, signs of the artist’s hand, as well as signs of the decisions taken in the moment, thought made visible. To him, to us. The work is alive and so are we. What’s abstract in that? He himself has said, “My eyes and mind tend to lead me down the same paths but if I don’t think about the paintings as images, and instead think of them as a series of actions, then I can make progress in the paintings.” As for those painters of the late 19th century—Seurat, Signac, Vuillard, et al—who explored color beyond nature, patterned brushstrokes and geometric structure, systematic techniques and optical mixing—if transported to our time, what would they make of Richard Tinkler’s work? Might they see it as a radical, lyrical extension of their own restless engagement? Images dissolved in painterly phasing and flutter, luminous color alive within a shimmering field, an art in the service of representing nothing but the act of painting itself, not knowing where it may lead? Every mark additive, every painting opening on to those to follow.
Where previously Tinkler’s drawings were related more closely to the paintings, there is now a clear distinction between them. The drawings, while expansive, can be seen to offer something fixed, or on which to fix our gaze, while the paintings attempt to capture something fleeting. And yet both his works on paper and the canvases can be experienced as durational, emerging from and eliciting a persistence of vision. We may be reminded of Agnes Pelton and the transcendentalists, of anonymous Tantra, of Hilma af Klint and Emma Kunz. The art of Richard Tinkler comes entirely from an inner drive that is personal, emotional, gently obsessive, and his alone, even as the motives remain elusive to he himself. In this there is nothing less than pure potentiality. “I don’t know why I’m doing what I’m doing,” he admits, “I just try to be as open as possible in the studio. Open to myself, open to the materials, open to my work, open to the world.”
Text by Bob Nickas
Richard Tinkler (b. 1975, Westminster, MD) has presented solo exhibitions at Elliot Templeton Fine Arts, 56 Henry and Team Gallery, New York, NY; Sebastian Gladstone, Los Angeles, CA; Villa Magdalena, San Sebastián-Donostia, Spain; Pazo Fine Art, Washington D.C.; Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, NY; and Albert Merola Gallery, Provincetown, MA. His work has been featured in group exhibitions at White Columns,The Drawing Center, Anton Kern Gallery, and Cheim & Read, New York, NY; Regen Projects, Los Angeles, CA; Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, France and Salzburg, Austria; and Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy, among others. Tinkler received a BA from the University of North Texas and an MFA from Hunter College, New York, NY. He lives and works in New York, NY.