Francis Tucker has been a practicing painter since finishing his formal education in 1954. He painted full time and doing research in methods and materials, until finances pressed him to seek employment in 1957. At that time, he came under the employment of Carl Laughlin of Laughlin Frames, learning carving, gilding and preparation of museum mounts and care of artwork. He remained in this career for 20 years.
In 1967, he joined the faculty of the Philadelphia College of Art, Evening Division, under the Directorship of Jane Flory. Francis was instrumental in turning a painting class of 7 students into a full painting department, which employed 3 painting and drawing instructors. He created a formal curriculum for fine art students in materials and methods. He remained at this institution until 1978.
In 1977, he took employment with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Francis and Terrence Fisher were able to upgrade the quality and expertise of installing works of art, which are still employed. In 1980, he moved into the Frame Shop of the Museum until 1982, when it merged with the Conservation Department. He then transferred to the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial, taking the position of building supervisor and instructor.
Francis retains a studio and frame shop at 835 Morris Street. Currently working with egg tempera, size and watercolor, his expertise in these fields help him to search out the hidden places of the poetic muse. Artist and students seek out his help with aesthetic and technical problems.
F C Tucker
FC Tucker
The Brooklyn Museum of Art - Billy Collins
I will now step over the soft velvet rope and walk directly into this massive Hudson River painting and pick my way along the Palisades with this stick I snapped off a dead tree.
I will skirt the smoky, nestled towns and seek the path that leads always outward until I become lost, without a hope of ever finding the way back to the museum.
I will stand on the bluffs in nineteenth-century clothes, a dwarf among rock, hills and flowing water, and I will fish fro the banks in a straw hat, which will feel like a brushstroke on my head.
And I will hide in the green covers of forests, so no appreciator of Frederick Edwin Church, leaning over the soft velvet rope, 'will spot my tiny figure moving in the stillness and cry out, pointing for others to see,
and be thought mad and led away to a cell where there is no vaulting landscape to explore, none of this bird song that halts me in my tracks, and no wide curving of this river that draws my steps toward the misty vanishing point.
Great Painting.....Thom
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