| CLIF
TINKER BIO
Artist
Clif Tinker has lived all across the United States in his
lifetime. He was born in Virginia, graduated from Fullerton
Union High School in California, and spent time in Colorado,
Montana, New Mexico and Texas. He lived in Copenhagen, the
capital of Denmark, for three months in 1983, where he
attended language school to learn Danish. He earned his BA in
psychology from the University of Houston in 1981. His first
professional artwork was as a paid daily cartoonist in the
University of Houston Newspaper in 1985. He moved to San
Antonio in 1985, earning a BFA in Painting from the University
of Texas at San Antonio in 1992, and an MA in art history in
2001 from UTSA. His master's thesis is an analysis of the
sculptural images, and a history, of the Aztec Theater in
downtown San Antonio. It will be published by Wings Press as a book in 2011.
Tinker is both
a working artist and an educator. He began his teaching career
in 1986, working at the San Antonio Art Institute the last
seven years it was open. He is in his fifteenth year of public school teaching, currently working at James Madison High School as an art teacher and as the chair of the fine arts department.
In 1993 he designed the nylon banners, known as
"The Transition Game", to decorate the Alamodome for
the San Antonio Spurs. At just over 80,000 square feet, this
is the largest work of art in Texas. In 2003, Tinker designed
the official poster for the San Antonio Public Library
Centennial. In 2004 he
designed "San
Antonio Spurs Then and Now", a commemorative poster
commissioned by the San Antonio Spurs to chronicle the history
of the team for the season ticket holders. Combined sales and distribution of these two posters is over 6,000 posters. Also in 2004, the Texas State Teacher's Association used Tinker's painting of their headquarters and the Texas State Capitol as the image for their official 125th anniversary poster. Throughout the state of Texas one of Tinker's paintings is being featured on 80,000 HEB reusable art bags.
Tinker's work
is about energy, movement, interaction, and energy systems. He
is a neo-Expressionist, and his work often refers to a sense
of place. Tinker's major series are of downtown San Antonio
and the Alamo, a study of aircraft at the San Antonio airport,
the Alamo Cement factory before it was redone as a shopping
center, paintings of the sculpture in the Aztec Theater in
downtown San Antonio, cactus, roosters, African animals,
runners, lizards, and school busses. He has also done a series
of non-representational paintings in the vein of Abstract
Expressionism. The new set of series he is also working on are
of scenes along Broadway in San Antonio from Loop 410 to
Downtown, tropical and ocean fish, and views of Jefferson High
School in San Antonio.
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