ARTIST PROFILE
Cornwall’s dramatic North Coast is the inspiration for a new collection by internationally respected artist Peter Turnbull. Peter Turnbull’s CV marks him out as an exceptional British artist: he studied at Nottingham College of Art and later the Royal College of Art in both London and Paris, and following his graduation he was represented by the prestigious Piccadilly Gallery on Cork Street, London. For many years Peter was Head of Fine Art at the University of Chester, and later became Visiting Professor of Fine Art after embarking on his full-time career as a painter. He has received the Rodney Burn Award for Figurative Drawing and has exhibited at internationally important venues such as The Royal Academy in London and American art dealer Terry Dintenfass’s gallery in New York. Peter’s powerful, elemental paintings demonstrate an intimate relationship with the landscapes that inspire his work, and walk the line, rather intriguingly, between the figurative and the abstract. “Initially I was a figurative painter” says Peter, “particularly during my time at the Royal College of Art and whilst exhibiting at Cork Street. I included, at that time, some works concerned with the landscape, but always with a figurative element. Gradually the landscape began to have a more dominant role in my painting, with the figure becoming a more subordinate element and the works becoming more abstracted, but that was not by deliberate intention: I respond to the form that a painting takes as it develops, and in that sense my work may be described as abstraction”. In his practice, he engages the use of ‘automatism’, which is the method of creating art instinctively, n 56 |
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without conscious thought: “intuitive mark making allows me to draw on imagery from my own memory, without any visual references” he says. The genre of landscape painting, Peter adds, is endlessly inspiring to him, and has endured for centuries because of the unique perception that each artist brings to this universally loved subject. “The perception of landscape is a highly personal one, one that belongs to a particular artist at a particular time” he says. “New approaches to landscape painting can transform previous values, and can educate, inform and set one’s own visual perspective in a new light. I believe that painting should embrace not only a direct representation of what is seen, but have a deeper quality that evokes feeling, and transcends the ‘known’ to a different level of understanding and a sense of place. I see myself as a part of the progression of British landscape painting in my development of the genre alongside those artists who transcend the literal transcription of the landscape, and create more than solely figurative works.” Peter’s emphatic application of paint, rich surface textures and translucent layers of colour are evidence of a deep engagement with his materials and the physical act of making artwork. “The majority of my works are oil paint on canvas or wood panel” says Peter. “The choice of support I use is defined by the type of imagery an artwork depicts - works on panel, for example, will have a different feel to works on canvas because on panel the
| Volume 2 Issue 67 | August - Septemer 2021
paint slips and slides more readily and inhabits a different set of values. Using layer upon layer of glazes promotes a feeling of history, and of development within the painting as a reference to the history of a particular landscape. I was lucky in that I received tuition at the Royal College of Art concerning mediums and their application, and for a number of years I worked with the classic medium of egg tempera and also manufactured my own oil paint. I believe that this understanding of one's chosen medium is important, and allows an artist to use materials to their best advantage to any given piece of work.” This autumn, Peter is exhibiting a new collection of works inspired by the drama and beauty of Cornish landscape, on show in the flesh and by virtual tour at Whitewater Contemporary Polzeath. “The works I will be exhibiting at Whitewater Contemporary are concerned with the impact the Cornish Landscape has had on my painting over the last 20 years” says Peter. “They respond to the north Cornish coastline and surrounding landscape, and to aspects drawn from my own visual memory. In particular, they respond to a unique quality inherent to the Cornish landscape - a sense of both place and history”. l See Peter Turnbull’s Cornwall collection throughout August at Whitewater Contemporary, The Parade, Polzeath, PL27 6SR, and by virtual 3D tour at whitewatercontemporary.co.uk.
