EARLY OIL PAINTINGS BY RALPH J TURNER

Posted by: Ralph Turner

20 Oil Paintings done in the years 1957 to 1960. Many were done while stationed at Strawberry Butte Lookout in the Fremont National Forest in Lake County, Oregon in the summers of 1957, 1958 and 1960. Others were done while teaching art in Seward Alaska (1959-1960), and the remaining paintings at Turner\\\\\\\'\\\\\\\'s studio in an old church in Cedar Mill, Oregon. They are influenced by the Abstract Expressionists of the NY school but retain a landscape orientation and color. These were the last paintings done by Turner in this medium as he turned to carved sculpture and to acrylics on Plexiglas. Much of the oil paint was ground by hand. These paintings were put in storage in 1962 and were not taken out of storage until 2005. They were cleaned and varnished after these 43 years.

Turner lived and worked in Tucson, Arizona, Syracuse New York, and then returned to Oregon in 1973 where he has lived in the country for 40 years. He worked a lot with architects and taught in the School of Architecture in at Syracuse University and also worked for ten years in the Space Program through the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona doing models of planetary surfaces. This has influenced his later work.

New Morning is open 7 days a week. The Exhibit is from 3 March to 7 April 2013
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