At the heart of Tori Tinsley‘s work is her mother. After studying in the Midwest, Tinsley came back to her native Atlanta to continue her work as an art therapist, but found herself pulled toward art once again when her mother got sick. Through bright colors and exaggerated figures, she works through the grief of slowly losing her mother to frontotemporal degeneration.
As a way to safekeeping memories and stories of her mother, Tinsley started the Mom’s Laugh Project, where she makes paintings about her mom’s passions and life.
A graduate student at The Welch School of Art & Design, Tinsley is a full-time artist who often switches from working with canvas to making larger-than-life sculptures. She had a big 2015 with more than 15 solo and group exhibitions—her work was displayed at the Hambidge Art Auction, MINT, GSU Welch Gallery, Mammal Gallery and The Goat Farm Arts Center, just to name a few. She also took part in WonderRoot’s CSA Season 7.
As she prepares to graduate in the spring, Tinsley talked to CommonCreativ about being a female artist, coping with her mother’s disease through art and her dream collaborations.
CommonCreativ: How has your art helped you deal with your mom’s degenerative disease?
Tori Tinsley: Great question. I find the more I make work, the more my raw emotions are coming to the surface. I’m not as anxiety-ridden day to day, and I attribute this to my daily art practice. It’s also provided a way to connect with others who are caregivers or who have lost someone to dementia. These are stories we normally wouldn’t share with strangers, but the work allows for the sharing of these experiences and positive connections can develop in the wake of terrible things.
CC: Tell me about the Mom’s Laugh Project.
TT: As I was practicing art therapy, I began using art as a way to honor my mom and raise awareness of her disease, as it’s rather rare (I believe this is changing with more awareness and better diagnoses). The result of my efforts resulted in the Mom’s Laugh Project, which offered me the opportunity to paint images of my mom from old photographs to document her life and remember our time together as mother and daughter. I titled these paintings with a future date, and once that day arrived I sanded down the image and videotaped this process. For me, the sanding process was a cathartic experience—the pain felt in destroying my work echoed the continual loss of my mom to the disease. The caveat was that the paintings could be “saved” from sanding if someone bought them. In this scenario, the memory was shared and the work preserved.
CC: You often create exaggerated figures and use bright colors. How did you find your style?
TT: Lots of work and time and investment in my studio. I don’t even know if I have a style—I so enjoy the process of painting and learning something new each time I work. I have no idea how my work is going to change or develop over the next year or 10 years. That’s both anxiety provoking and exciting. Regarding my current series, I found it through painting a lot and studying other painters and sculptors. The figures from the “Hug” series and the one coming out of that (“Consumed”) developed out of some sketches this past summer in which I drew my old work hugging my newer work. My older work contained contour line drawings of my mom morphing into strange creatures, but my newer work explored the theory of contact comfort studied by psychologist Harry Harlow. In these sketches bridging the two series, there was a real hug in there. In drawing them over and over again, the sketches morphed and I found the arms not quite holding on. After a lot of reflection I realized these creatures echoed my relationship with my mother and how I want so desperately to hold on to her as she moves closer to death. But the arms don’t work, just like I can’t really hold on to her once she passes.
The amped up colors are a necessary part of this anxiety for me and make palatable an otherwise unbearable topic. If I can paint it and make it colorful or darkly humorous, I feel like I have some power over it.
Tori Tinsley
CC: What’s your creative process?
TT: For a long time I just jumped in, but more recently I’ve been using my sketchbook as a place to quickly sketch the images that form in my mind and then work on them in terms of composition, balance, etc. As for color, I typically have a feeling about a color and will just go for it, but sometimes it helps me to look at other painters and see how they use color as well.
CC: Are you more comfortable with paintings or sculptures?
TT: I love being able to listen to myself and work on what calls me the day of. Sometimes I need to paint on a canvas or panel and some days I need to build and work all around an object. For me, they’re part of the same discussion, but occupying different spaces. I hope that for my thesis exhibition next March they’ll be even more conversant.
I’m working on developing some short stop-motion animations with the hug figures and am really excited about getting this underway. Also, I’ve been working with artist Craig Dongoski using video and a machine he has that picks up my mother’s brainwave activity. I am not sure yet how this will develop but I feel so blessed I was able to record my mother’s brain activity while she’s still alive.
CC: What inspires you?
TT: I think a consistent inspiration for me, or at least something I never tire of thinking about, is interpersonal relationships. I’m not great about friendships or staying connected to others over the long term, but I find the bonds between people and how I interpret these relationships as endlessly fascinating. Perhaps this is why I became an art therapist.
CC: Tell me about being a female artist in Atlanta—do you feel like there’s room for ladies to grow?
TT: Hell yes. At least, there better be. Being in grad school with a pretty even mix of men and women has created a feeling [for me] that perhaps a gender divide doesn’t exist here. I know I’m a woman artist, but I haven’t felt that others would want or not want to include me in an exhibition or buy my work because of that. In time I might be better able to answer this question. I love that there are so many powerful, intelligent, and influential women running the art scene—Stephanie Cash, Susannah Darrow and Victoria Camblin are a few who have personally inspired me.
CC: Which local artists would you like to collaborate with? Do you have any artists you look up to?
TT: I am someone who likes to work alone and am not too keen on collaborating. But I would like to do something, be it a collaboration or something else, with ceramist and sculptor Michelle Laxalt. She’s also an explorer and manipulator of the human form and various mixed media. Also, I’d love to work with painter Ally White in some way. I like the idea of all this color and these crazy figures doing weird things in an exhibit. And there is writer (and close friend) Kalpana Narayanan, for years we have discussed collaborating on a book or short story. Maybe someday soon this will happen. As far as who I admire in terms of their work, I’m looking at Nicole Eisenman, Marlene Dumas, William Kentridge, William Downs (he’s a friend and teaches at GSU, but I really do admire his drawings), Franz West and George Condo.
CC: What are your thoughts on the local creative scene right now?
TT: It’s very welcoming of new artists and supportive of work outside of traditional gallery exhibitions. I do wish I was seeing more new painters, but perhaps I’m just not getting out as much as I should. And with this goes wanting to see more traditional galleries. I just love a white box with some beautiful (and ugly too, if they’re good) paintings inside. I also wish there was more critical writing regarding work being created, but then again I might be on the end receiving bad reviews and will regret I ever mentioned it. But I do think that criticism pushes and makes stronger work, so I think I’d be okay with that.
CC: You had a big year! What’s next for you?
TT: Right now, I’m gearing up for Aqua at Art Basel in Miami. I’ll be exhibiting alongside my fellow third years and looking forward to the fun times and connections this will (hopefully) bring. For some reason, I decided it would be a good idea to go to Vermont Studio Center in January, so I’ll be doing that for two weeks. And then, in March, I’ll be having my solo thesis exhibition at GSU, and then following that another solo show a bit later at Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery.
You can see more of Tori Tinsley’s work on her portfolio site.
