Category Archives: Artists

Rarely have I seen a sunset or sunrise depicted by a painter that does not touch on gooey sentimentality, akin to the sensation of a child’s hand on one’s arm, warm but sticky.

The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up. Oil painting on canvas. By JMW Turner.

Kitsch painting relegates images of the sun’s risings and settings to the corny, exemplified in the ubiquitous beach sunset painting hung over a plastic wrapped couch next to a plastic wrapped lampshade.

But something places Turner’s paintings solidly in the realm of the significant, the ennobled. Looking at Turner’s initially improbable depictions of atmosphere one learns to see the haze, ambiance, spectral glows surrounding one every day—so much one may not have seen or valued before.

Secrets in the Magic Show

Observing a painter’s techniques is like looking over the back of a boat at its propeller wash to understand its engine. Style remains prop wash, drawing wide attention but not explaining the artist’s internal machinery.

Like most artists, I hunt out the trick behind other artists’ magic show to add to my own vaudevillian pavilion of technique and philosophy. Painting, unlike the illustration of an idea or editorial piece, explores a concept rather than declaring an opinion. Painting’s a sloppy affair, like groping for the light switch in a blackened room of paint buckets.

So what hidden headwaters fed Turner’s imagery without souring it with the saccharine?

I believe that Turner gave away the secret of his resistance to the sentimental on the morning of his death when he summarized in words what he had been repeatedly Continue reading “JMW Turner’s Secret Love” »