Mick Turner
Love Stories
17 August – 3 September 2011
I’ve always painted.
I studied art at school but I didn’t go to art school however I’m always learning off my friends who did. In these paintings using oil paint on linen, with brushes and more often than not with gloved fingers I’m exploring and documenting relationships using color and form. There are three sets: landscapes, portraits and beasts, some overlap. The landscapes are real places, the portraits are real people (sometimes) and the beasts can be what you like. Some scenes are ordinary but unreal, others are fantastical but real in another sense they all speak of a story of love.
The ‘Thylacine’ is a set, superficially they call to mind the tragedy of a species made extinct by the hand of human intervention, so close to home in place and time. My interest however comes more from them as a symbol of mortality, as individuals and through to the mortality of all, nothing lasts for ever and everything is constantly changing.
The images of these beasts taken from a few existing photos, seemed so poignant, some are of the very last, yawning or gazing with a sad wonder. In these photos the ‘Thylacine’ were all in cages, so I took them out and set them free, somebody had to do it.
All but one of the landscapes is the same path to the beach at Phillip Island. The colors are always changing depending on the season, time of day, weather, and mind of the viewer. Some days you see the wallabies at dusk, and at a certain time of year each step brings a cascade of moths. The ocean is vast, ever dynamic and relentless.
In these paintings I’m trying to convey the fantastic, the unreal, layers of spirit, emotion, fear, love and wonder, in the ordinary. How the landscape exists as its own yet entrenched and un-removed from oneself. Like moving through treacle, you can’t leave it alone, within you and without you fluid and sticky. My art I’m simply documenting life outside of words.
Contact
Phone : (03) 9482 3550
mail@redgallery.com.au
Address
157 St Georges Rd
Fitzroy North, Victoria, 3068
Map
How to get here
Tram: route 11
Stop 21 just north of Edinburgh Gardens
Melway ref: 30B12
Parking in nearby streets
Bus: 504 (Reid Street)
