Dwelling in the Thin Spaces with Kathryn Mapes Turner

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April | May 2016

From Cowboy to Contemporary

Phil Bob Borman’s Cowboy Skyscapes Dwelling in the Thin Spaces with Kathryn Mapes Turner Jerri and Mark Lisk: For the Love of the Land Architecture in the West: From Montana to California

plus:

In the Studio with Father Bill Moore Collector’s Notebook: Donating to Art Museums Perspective: Seth Eastman [1808–1875]


Kathryn Mapes Turner explores the lines in nature where wild lives meet another world

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athryn Mapes Turner is stimulated by the boundaries of evanescence. Her elegant work often explores edges found between the physical here-and-now in nature and what shamans reverentially call otherworldly dimensions. Even if we don’t see them, she says, they are there; what we must do is open our minds.

March of Aeons Oil on Canvas | 18 x 36 inches

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While this may sound New Agey, Turner isn’t that kind of painter. The great Italian

Three Matriarchs Oil on Canvas | 36 x 60 inches

Renaissance painters, too, were intrigued by

celebrated for his own atmospheric compositions, shares this observation about her ascent as one of the

fact that Turner’s imagery makes allusions to wildlife is one

best impressionists of her generation. “As an artist, you can either reproduce what’s readily vis-

At the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole,

ible and call it adequate. Or you can make things visible that

Wyoming, there’s been a new acquisition added into the per-

aren’t — things that have as much to do with what dwells

manent collection — a major oil painting by Turner, which

inside of us as the forces of life that every once in a while

did not arrive in the same form that it started. A similar

reveal their presence through the metaphorical fog,” he says.

observation could be applied to the artist herself.

“Kathryn isn’t painting nature. She’s becoming nature.”

Three Matriarchs is an ethereal, almost haunting portrayal

A daughter of the Northern Rockies, Turner was born in

of a band of elk mothers sleeking through the Snake River’s

1971 and spent much of her childhood in Jackson Hole on

misty, twisting flanks at dawn. For Turner, having it join

horseback being a cowgirl. Her family still operates the land-

masterpieces by both famous deceased artists and living

mark Triangle X Guest Ranch in Grand Teton National Park,

legends generations her senior not only validates her grow-

and as a kid she awoke every morning to the imposing loom

ing stature as a painter of the natural world; it is, in a way,

of the Tetons. Growing up, she knew the late John Clymer

an existential statement about how she approaches allegory.

[1907–1989] and Conrad Schwiering [1916 –1986], who

In addition to the prestige of Three Matriarchs being

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for much of the past decade, and who is

the challenge of translating transcendence through art. The of the reasons her work stands apart.

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Painter John Felsing, a mentor to Turner

became renowned as “the painter of the Tetons.”

purchased for the National Museum of Wildlife Art, Turner

Turner’s uncle and cousins still run a hunting outfitting

recently had a portrayal of sandhill cranes acquired by the

and guiding business on the adjacent national forest. Her

Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, where she’s been juried

father, John F. Turner, trained to become a field biologist,

into its annual Birds in Art exhibition, and other pieces have

then went on to become president of the Wyoming Senate

won top honors from the American Impressionist Society.

and later served in the administrations of both Presidents


Dwelling intheThinSpaces George Herbert Walker Bush and his son, George W. Bush.

happened from being outside and living where I do,” she says.

For the former, her father was national director of the U.S.

“I find painting wildlife to be a lot more fulfilling than paint-

Fish and Wildlife Service, and it was that tenure that brought

ing landscape, and it’s made me more determined to ensure

Kathryn to Washington, D.C.

we protect the places where animals live.”

“It’s the same old story. In order to fully appreciate the

Trained in plein air, Turner delved into landscapes and

West,” Turner says, “you have to leave it for a while. But I

attracted a following for her watercolors and oils. Only after

didn’t go willingly.”

she turned herself loose in the natural world, shedding

In the nation’s capital, she attended high school and,

inhibitions, challenging what she thought she knew, did

thanks in large part to Ann Simpson, wife of former U.S.

she come to understand the sentience of mountains, forests,

Senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming, Turner received a

water bodies and the myriad animal lives passing through

crash course in art history, walking the halls of the Corcoran

them. Only then did the distance separating Turner from her

Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian’s National Gallery of Art and

subjects begin to close, she says. And only then, observers

savoring historic nature dioramas at the National Museum of

note, did Turner shift from being primarily a talented observ-

Natural History.

er of pastoral and wild settings to gaining national distinction

After prep school, she majored in studio arts at the University of Notre Dame. On trips home to Jackson Hole,

as an exceptional interpreter of them. “Part of letting go has been discovering myself and losing

she fell in the company of a remarkable circle of Western landscape, wildlife and studio painters, among them Ned Jacob, Milo “Skip” Whitcomb, T. Allen Lawson, Kathy Wipfler and the late Bob Kuhn [1920 –2007], when he visited the valley. Renowned art collector Bill Kerr remembers meeting the then-teenage “Kathy Turner” in the mid-1980s when she attended an art workshop held at the National Museum of Wildlife Art, which Kerr had co-founded. “She made quite an impact on me at our first encounter,” Kerr shares, noting that each participant was asked to create a piece. “Kathy produced a watercolor of two mountain goats cast in bronze. It was startlingly good, easily the best of all. Nearly 30 years later, that watercolor holds vivid in memory, and that young lady, who grew up to become Kathryn Turner, the award-winning professional artist, continues to amaze.” There were few indications in the early years that one day Turner would become known for painting wildlife. “Wildlife has been showing up more in my work. It hasn’t been deliberate. It’s JJ Oil on Canvas | 18 x 14 inches

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Morning Oil on Linen | 10 x 12 inches

Ever dominant, the iconic summits can be both a blessing and a curse. So prominent is the profile they can divert attention away from everywhere else around them. Thomas Moran interpreted them, so did Albert Bierstadt, Carl Rungius and hundreds of others. “It is really intimidating to paint those mountains because of the reverence I feel for them. Frankly, it takes a lot of nerve to try and paint their beauty,” Turner says, noting that doing them justice means sparing them from trite depiction. She remembers stories from her grandmother of how oldtimers regarded the Tetons before there was a commercial airport and being snowed in was a given in winter. “Those myself, adopting a philosophy toward art that is about resisting over-control,” Turner says. “My two greatest teachers have been watercolor, where I started as an artist, which is a very therapeutic medium for a control freak. My other instructor has been nature, and she’s taught me that some of the most beautiful things are the simplest.” Evidenced by her recent work, she’s poured an enormous amount of time into studying techniques of Japanese and Chinese painters. She also embraces the pagan notion, born millennia ago in the British Isles and later adopted by Celts and Christian mystics, that asserts there’s a “thin place” separating our physical reality from another dimension just beyond our ken. A few summers ago, she explored it as a theme in a sold out, onewoman show, and many of those works featured the Tetons from different angles and moods. “If you live in Jackson Hole and you are an artist, you don’t have a choice,” Turner says. “You have to address the Tetons in some way.” Two Step Oil on Linen | 30 x 24 inches

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first generations who settled permanently in the valley had a conflicted relationship with the Tetons. They were undeniably beautiful, but they represented a physical barrier to accessing the outer world and, in a way, the Tetons reminded them once the snow started to fly that they were trapped.” When Turner and I spoke she explained that on the previous morning she’d been out photographing and painting wildlife. At the same time she was cramming information into a study on her portable easel, an avalanche rumbled down a slope, killing a skier. Nurturing as the mountains are to the common identity of Jackson Holeans, and as solemn and benevolent as they might appear, they are indifferent to the whims of people. There is power and truth, Turner says, in simplicity, distilling the glory of nature down to its basic forms. With fewer barriers, she’s after the paradox of heightened intimacy and occasionally, a glance into the eternal. “Those thin places exist in nature,” Turner says. “We can go there, dwell there, and our souls need such places. I feel like art can provide the same thing in transporting us. I try to make paintings that help us access little windows where revelation can occur.” How Three Matriarchs, a massive 36- by 60-inch oil, came into being happened this way: Turner had gone on one of her regular outings to the Snake in order to gather reference material — putting together studies for a landscape painting she was thinking of doing featuring the Tetons hovering in the background. “And then three elk emerged seemingly out of nowhere, having been hidden in a low cloudbank,” she explains. “They reminded me that we are not always aware of what resides just beyond the limits of our sensual perception.” Turner considers it the highest of honors that Three Matriarchs earned a place in the museum’s permanent collection, sharing company with some of the finest wildlife artworks of all time. “The museum has brought me back full circle,” she says. In 2015, Turner was commissioned by her alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, to return to campus and paint one of its most iconic landmarks, the Golden Dome. Her interpretation is an abstracted version. Over the years, she has painted in Italy, as well as famed edifices around Washington, D.C. Bill and Joffa Kerr own one of Turner’s studies of the Jefferson Memorial. They also proudly have a landscape overlooking Jackson Lake and a floral still life. “Each is different in subject matter, however whichever one

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Dwelling intheThinSpaces

you’re looking at brings visual harmony to the viewer,” Bill Kerr says.

Teton Sunset Oil on Canvas | 36 x 60 inches

George Archibald, considered the leading authority on wild

transition from plein air to more ambitious studio painting.

cranes of the world, on a pilgrimage to watch migratory

“She’s evolving. She’s pressing past her comfort zone into

sandhill cranes massing along the Platte River in Nebraska.

uncharted territory. It’s exhilarating when work reflects the

“Artists who paint the natural world, especially birders, are a

confidence you feel, but it can also be a frightening place to

funny bunch, but they’re my people,” Turner says.

be,” he says. “If you look at the best art that’s ever been cre-

Felsing explains that Turner’s embracing of wildlife isn’t about documenting animals as subject matter, it’s about

ated in history, it’s been done by those who were not halted by fear.”

sensing how animate objects — spirits, beings, sparks

Painter Skip Whitcomb explains that the danger for

of life — give landscapes a greater depth of presence.

young painters receiving acclaim in their 20s is that success

“We’ve had many long conversations about the pitfalls of

makes them complacent and risk-averse. “Unlike others who

Realism,” Felsing says. “And instead of examining together

have lost their way, Kathryn is very earnest in her explora-

the works of other wildlife artists, we’ve been looking at

tions. But I feel that she has just scratched the surface of what

Abstract Expressionists Rothko, Diebenkorn, de Kooning

she is capable of doing,” Whitcomb says.

and Impressionist Twachtman. Their work demands response in ways that simply painting pretty pictures does not.”

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Felsing says it’s misleading to describe Turner as simply going through a period of

In 2016, Turner joined ornithologist

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the path must be my own.”

“She has a tremendous pool of ability, and by living where she does, she’s absorbed aspects of the natural aes-

“John has been ruthless in encouraging me to find my

thetic that you can’t learn or teach. Her challenge now is

voice, pushing me, pushing me hard,” Turner says, adding

rejecting the path of least resistance even when people tell her

that he offers critiques of works in progress as they chat

they love the work and want her to stop evolving,” he adds.

via FaceTime. “His big thing is being consciously aware

“If we want to reach higher planes of meaning, we all have to

of immediacy, being awake in the moment. It’s the way

probe the dark corners. They are unavoidable. That’s where

he approaches his own relationship with nature, but he

we really understand who we are and what we are made of.

doesn’t want me to follow his path or anyone else’s. He says

That is the opportunity and the challenge of being alive.”


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