By Vicki Prichard
NKyTribune reporter
Burke Tinsley can’t remember a time when he wasn’t creating creatures. Since he was eight or nine-years-old, he says, he’s carried another world in his mind.
“I would describe this world as a manifestation of everything in my life,” says Tinsely.
With age came execution, and by the time Tinsley was around 10 or 11-years-old, he began organizing the creatures that had emerged in his mind, giving them names, languages, and their own communities.
“First the world was Zalcemane, now I think of Zalcemane as a continent in a larger world of Onum,” says Tinsley.
They were worlds that harbored comfort, strength and an escape when, at the age of 13, Tinsley was diagnosed with a brain tumor that paralyzed his entire body. He slowly learned to walk, talk and, finally, draw again.
In 2015, Tinsley, who is now a senior at Highlands Latin School in Louisville, earned a place in the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts Carnegie Scholarship for his drawings of his internal world.
Through June 11, 2016, visitors to the Carnegie’s Youth Gallery can get a glimpse of that world of Tinsley’s imagination with the exhibit, Burke Tinsely: An Unknown World. Tinsley will donate any proceeds from the sales of his work to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
The proceeds will support the expansion of the In-Patient Rehabilitation Gym at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
“That is where I learned to walk again and move again after being paralyzed,” says Tinsley. “A lot of other hospitals didn’t want me as a patient. They thought I was too sick. But Cincinnati Children’s did want me and it took a long time but I’ve gotten better. I still can’t run, but I can walk.”
Paralyzed for nearly a year, Tinsley would retreat to the world in his mind, creating new creatures and thinking about the day when he could draw again. The world of Onum, he says, was just a better place to be and motivated him.
“In my head, I would go there,” says Tinsley. “I love drawing and got in trouble in school for drawing on my homework. I just wanted to get back to a place where I could draw and create stories again.”
When he was able to draw once again, Tinsley says the GSA experience inspired him to make art in new ways such as sculpture and print-making.
“I did things I’ve never done before,” says Tinsley. “Everyone should apply to GSA. You might not get in but you should try. I don’t know how I got in, but I’m glad I did.”
Artistic inspiration, says Tinsley, comes to him by way of German cartoonist, author and illustrator, Walter Moers, British illustrator Chris Riddell, British authors Paul Stewart, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.
“My dad’s an artist and I really like his work, too,” says Tinsley.
The Carnegie waived their normal cut of exhibit sales so that 100 percent of the proceeds of the sale of Tinsley’s art will support the hospital’s gym expansion.
“Everyone should come and buy some art,” says Tinsely.
Tinsley’s exhibit coincides with the opening of Formal Function: Strategies of Abstraction, a regional survey examining the use of abstraction in painting and sculpture.
“The exhibition is something like a cross-section of how artists in this part of the world are either examining abstract art or how they incorporate it into their process,” says Matt Distel, exhibition director at the Carnegie. “The sum total of the work on view demonstrates a really vibrant examination into one of the primary strategies of painting and sculpture.”
Participating artists include, Jimmy Baker, Scottie Bellissemo, Rupa Chordia, Jeffrey Cortland Jones, Curtis Davis, Mark Dejong, Kim Flora, Jolie Harris, Frank Herrmann, Justin Hodges, Davalene Hogg, Andrew Hostick, Shohei Katayama, Richard Koenig, Kim Krause, Bill Renschler, Kim Rae Taylor, Paul Thie, Kevin White, Paige Williams, Joseph Winterhalter and Rick Whohoy.