by Kirby Congdon…….

This artist, familiar with the Maryland Institue of Contemporary Art, is active in Baltimore while Paul Gildea has provided a show of of her intimate paintings at his gallery on February 26th. Most of her thirty pieces are quiet interiors, an afternoon at the beach or casual portraits. One scene was located in Paris. One portraits was a cow in a sitting position looking contentedly at us. The title was “In the Clover.” Another was simply of a young person washing her feet, called “Tired Feet.”

We asked Ms. Tinkersley, “Where, in either a public or private way, are you going?” She felt that her overall aim was to “capture the essence of the scene” through observation, giving us a quiet moment in contemporary life. She said, however, that the appeal of history was becoming a new interest for her. She pointed to a new work larger than her usual output. It depicted a large tree to one side that had grown there on its own through the years. Across the bottom of the painting was an abandoned railroad viaduct or bridge. It suggested an era that hd a sense of romance that it had taken on with memory and age. This picture had, again, a quiet aura that her earlier work suggests. This viewer thinks now of Proust’s madelaine dipped in tea. In a country like ours that ceaselessly heralds the new, Ms. Tinkersley’s stance is a refreshing antidote to involuntary distraction, capturing so well so many details we can so easily miss.