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=Francine Turk=

Francine Turk (born August 25th, 1981 in Oaklawn, IL) is an American fine artist and documentarian, a classicist and a nonconformist; and the Guardian of the Preservation of the Sacred Creative. She is an advocate for safeguarding artifacts and icons that have made a cultural and historical impact. None of her bodies of work are like the other but all of them are interconnected by one common thread- preservation- which lives at the center of her art.

She initially gained attention in the early 1990s with a series of soulful charcoal nudes. These portraits arrived in the midst of her emotional turmoil, self-discovery and excavation. Turk’s signature charcoal nudes have left their mark on a global scale. Her pieces have been featured in the films |The Break Up, | Fathers And Daughters and most recently in television’s critically-acclaimed hit series | Empire.

An art-school dropout, Turk relishes in forging her own path as an artist and entrepreneur, and actively supports the international artistic community.

She has exhibited internationally and has been featured in private celebrity and corporate collections throughout the U.S. and Europe. Working in a variety of mediums and drawing on classic historical art forms as well as contemporary pop imagery, Turk is a go-to for designers and serious collectors alike.

Next Level BadAss | Miles Davis & Francine Turk
In 2015, she was selected by the family and executors of the | Miles Davis estate to create work as a tribute to the legacy of legendary virtuoso. The fine art vault of Miles Davis was opened to her and in it, she discovered Davis’s most personal and intimate possessions: catalogues of casual drawings, paintings and musings that reveal a side of Davis that few ever knew. In September 2016, "Next Level BadAss | Miles Davis & Francine Turk" is scheduled to open timed to Expo Art in Chicago. It is a bold, genre-busting tribute to Davis’s creative genius that will be unveiled timed to commemorate what would have been Davis’s 90th birth year and the 25th anniversary of his death.

Art History
She has exhibited in group shows of masters including | Pablo Picasso, | Andy Warhol and Joan Miro. Her oil paintings titled Ascension (2015) were exhibited at KM Fine Arts (Chicago and Los Angeles), where she also had two solo shows: Retrospective (2012) and BadAss (2011), an ongoing series of portraits conceived as an homage to fearless icons in pursuit of truth, such as | Bob Dylan, | Jimi Hendrix, | Elizabeth Taylor and others.

Integrity and protection are the key themes in her work. Love Letter to a Matador (2013) is inspired by the ritual of bullfighting, passed down between generations, while Sunday Blues and Chess Records (both 2015) are large-scale oil paintings that were commissioned by Hyatt Centric The Loop Chicago and inspired by the spirit of the Maxwell Street Market, the city’s historic blues culture and the birth of rock and roll.

Turk is a supporter of humanitarian causes including |MusiCares; the GRAMMY Foundation and the annual show benefiting the | Silverlake Conservatory of Music, founded by Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, curated by the Gagosian and Flea.