Tin Odescalchi trained at Glos C.A.T. in the 1980's and later under Rudolph Hausner at the Vienna Academie.

For nearly thirty years, Tin Odescalchi's work has been concerned with the depiction of her immediate environment. Where once this was represented by an uncompromising view of the urban life and inhabitants of Berwick Street, Soho, she has now moved to an altogether more gentle, yet still individual, presentation of the rural landscape.

Perhaps more introspective in conception than their urban predecessors, latterly the artist's paintings have demonstrated a growing dialogue between the physical surface of the picture itself, and the scene represented. When Working in oils with great immediacy direct from the subject with bold mark-making, form and light is seen as a tangible, almost plastic, reality, emphasised by the use of heavily impastoed layers of paint. This technique applied to portraits, as well as landscapes, and lent an almost sculptural, relief-like appearance to the paintings: "My work is all about communicating what is in front of me - the essence of what I am seeing - but at the same time, using the quality of the paint itself." Thus light and colour define form and the paint itself becomes more than just an illusory vehicle; it is transformed into a subject itself. This awareness and respect for the medium is a concern Tin shares with other artists; Frank Auerbach being the most obvious, but Lucian Freud shared similar preoccupations with the painted surface.

These concerns reflect part of a British landscape tradition that can be seen to stretch back to Constable, Turner or Palmer. A succinct explanation is give by Tin herself: "From close up, the paintings are about the quality and lusciousness of paint and brush strokes, which makes its own landscape, but as you step back the image I have been working to create becomes clear."

This idea of distance, of a separation from the observer and the observed, is important. It allows us as viewers to differentiate between our experience of the picture as an art objective, whilst at the same time emphasises the autonomous integrity of the artwork itself. Tin's developmental structure and technique remain consistent within the British tradition, and her message, whilst sharing stylistic parallels with others, is nonetheless transmitted uniquely; the acknowledgement of a universal vision sitting perfectly alongside the more intensely personal intimacy the paintings convey.

After some health issues concerning oil paint, more recently Tin has moved to painting in watercolour, and watercolour based mixed media. She still focuses on the layered qualities of the paint to achieve her recognised sense of light, with greater emphasis on translucency and line, instead of mass, as previously. "I love to allow the watercolour to do its thing - run and splash - and then to bring the piece together a little with a few lines"

Now she is taking a break from painting with oils, she says: "I try not to be influenced by any particular artist; rather working intuitively from what I am painting whilst exploring new media to best describe what is in front of me."

Her most recent departure is to use wool/silk fibre as a medium, using the layers of fibres to mix her colours. This style is unique to Tin and have come to be known as ‘floating paintings'. They resemble a watercolour at first glance and have been likened to a ‘3D Turner in a perspex box'. Like her oils, she retains her interest in light and texture, but in these works the texture is gossamer-like and ephemeral.