A gallery of contemporary modern artworks by the painter Richard Turner. Abstract art, Surrealist art. Paintings of abstract forms, surrealist landscapes. Paintings created with mixed media, conte, acrylic, gouache, pastel, ink, oil pastel, oils and watercolour on canvas, board and various papers.

The Work of Richard Turner

 Taken from an appreciation by Don Feasey, Nov '99

His use of colour is dramatic and compelling. It is this aspect of his work that first attracts my attention. Standing as an observer more subtle influences of artistic organisation begin to engage both my conscious and unconscious mind.

As a psychoanalytic psychotherapist I became aware of responses in me that come from another level of engagement with the paintings. My response begins to reflect an understanding beyond the narrative of the picture. At a deeper and perhaps more primitive and profound level I begin to resonate to the impact of the whole picture experience. I have acquired a 'bird' painting recently exhibited by Richard, which evokes this response in me where the rising image of the creature emblazoned in its colours of fire and energy excites a response in me that is essentially primitive and aspirational. It is noteworthy that the picture occupies the whole canvas, there is no possibility of any amendment, and the frame is heavy and firmly containing of the art statement: a very satisfactory experience.

.......I simply call upon the visitor to submit to the paintings, allow them a spontaneous response, and suspend the intellectual, critical mind in its desire to deconstruct, analyse and organise a cognitive response. Let all this come later, the paintings easily accommodate to this critical view but, in their essentials, call upon us to 'allow' them in ourselves, in the first instance, as free-standing experiences of beauty.