In September Jonathan Cooper Park Walk Gallery will be holding its first solo exhibition of 48 paintings by Nicholas Turner, RWA.
This series combines the artist’s enduring fascination with the landscape of the mind and the meditative process of painting with a new engagement with the still life genre. Arising from his admiration of the St Ives School and the living tradition of modern British art, many of these works have been inspired by recent artistic pilgrimages to Cornwall.
The memory of monuments and coastlines is captured and transformed in paintings such as Chair with Flowers, while still lifes such as White Vase celebrate the quiet stillness of the interior world, and the dramatic leap recorded in The Jump invites interpretation, rich in narrative potential. In the self portrait Man with Flowers we see Turner paying homage to his artistic forebear Christopher Wood, visiting the Ship Inn in the Cornish town of Mousehole which Wood frequented and painted.
Throughout the exhibition we observe the artist’s masterful balance of colour and geometric composition as he explores themes of memory, solitude and contemplation.
Nicholas Turner RWA (b.1972, London) lives in Somerset. He achieved a BA (Hons) Fine Art at UWE Bristol and in 2003 was elected an academician of the Royal West of England Academy, serving on its governing council. He has exhibited widely and his work is included in numerous public collections; The Royal Collection, RWA; Permanent collection, Talbouy’s Bequest RWA; Marquis of Bath; Lady Heseltine and private collections across the UK, Japan, USA, Italy, Israel.