Terry Turrell

“My paintings and my sculpture are a natural progression of each other. The surface texture of both plays a major role in the final result. At this point, my work continues to be figurative in nature.”

Terry Turrel is a self-taught artist, working in the technique of painting and sculpture. The artworks are majorly figurative with abstract forms accompanying the subjects to convey a sense of the narration.

Turrel’s artworks are process driven. As the artist himself expresses, his artworks often find their form through the evolving strategy. Beginning with the application of the medium, be it colour or metal or clay, the basic form is stirred to resume the creative process. For the paintings, once the artist completes applying colour, he moves on to find and attribute suitable representation to the given shapes or forms. In the case of sculptures, he carves the head first and then arranges the body parts, and many times they are even interchanged.

The artist also has talked about his works in the two different media of art i.e painting and sculpture and their interrelationship. The use of metal and paper in the artist’s recent works is notable in this context. In both mediums, the emotions intended to be expressed come naturally and importantly in the artist’s works. Simple forms, visible brush marks in his paintings, and spontaneity blended with nuanced images breathe life into the works.