Turner: A postmodern response

By Stacey Ogg

My painting is a postmodern response to the work of Turner, a portrait of whom is  currently exhibited in Room 18, Radicals and Non-Conformists. For many years I have been inspired by Turner's use of light and colour and his ability to create such dramatic land and seascapes through clever use of pigment, clear vision and a painterly determination to create the etherial from the sometimes mundane. For me, the most interesting subject matter of Turner's works has always been the sky - bellowing clouds with zinc white, yellow and prussian blue hews strewn across the canvas adding a magical sense of depth and a stormy mood, particularly seen in the painting Dutch Boats in a Gale (The Bridgewater Sea Piece), 1801, currently on display next door at The National Gallery.  In this work Turner uses the white sails of the ship in the foreground to break up and create a negative space in the composition, this visual "break" or "full stop" from the overshadowing atmosphere can be translated into the works of the Abstract Expressionists, particulary Guston, Hoffmann and Still who use blocks of colour to create a sense of tension and drama between the painted surface and the edge on the canvas to create an interesting debate about subject matter vs. the subconcious mark making emotional response of the Abstract Expressionist movement.

My painting, Untitled 2011 examines this debate raising the question "is my work a carefully constructed and composed landscape or is it an emotional response or perhaps simply a painting about the process of painting?" The title Untitled 2011 pays direct homage to the Abstract Expressionists, without a descriptive title, my work speaks for itself and doesn't give away any clues, instead allowing the viewer to make of it what they will.