The Turner Contemporary Margate Last Chance to see Nothing in the World But Youth.

Tomorrow Sunday 8^th January 2012 is your last chance to see this exhibition and if you haven’t done so yet it really is worth seeing.

Peter Blake Self Portrait with Badges 1961 Oil on board © Peter Blake

From Monday the upstairs part of the gallery will be closed until Tuesday 17th January 2012 when the Hamish Fulton: Walk Exhibition starts but won’t be completely open until Saturday 28th January 2012 when the Turner and the Elements Exhibition starts.

Santiago Mostyn Callie on the sandbank from excerpt all most heaven 2008 © Santiago Mostyn

The pictures above are a couple of the ones in the current exhibition reproduced here with kind permission etc.

So what so special about this guy Will Turner?

Well for me is, and I only have even a vague notion of watercolour painting, is that he managed to get so much light in his pictures and I suppose that he managed to do a lot with not very much on the palate front.

Most of his watercolours seem to have been accomplished with four different colours, here they are.

And despite what the experts say if you take any old turner watercolour and have a go at reproducing the colours like this.

You seem to be able to make the colours.

If you are not very careful things go rather ice cream like, see what I mean.

I got a load of cheap watercolour paper for Christmas, so I can play and play and play.

Anyway using some Turner colour I am wondering what Turner would paint related to Hamish’s walks, sploshing some water and some paint on for the background, this bit of Christmas paper is about A3 size you get something like this.

However taking a closer look at the figures they won’t conform and walk properly, in fact they seem to be larking about, this happens with watercolour paint, it wouldn’t dare happen in a photograph, see what I mean. 

The point I am making here is something like it wasn’t me gov, I have added a few more people and put a two pound coin in the picture for the size of the things.

Anyway here is the finished sketch, I didn’t use the India ink for the black that Turner used as it’s a bit of a permanent thing to have about with children, I used what he would have called bone black but now is rather euphemistically called ivory black.

Well that was my bit on Hamish’s walk see http://www.turnercontemporary.org/exhibitions/hamish-fulton I am sort of working on the principle that words fail me so I thought I would try expressing my self mostly in images.  

The next four pictures are representative of Turner on the elements and I expect some of them will feature in the exhibition.

Anyway what I am trying to get at here is why the Turner pictures above are art and why the exhibition will be worth going to see and this is sort of tied in with why I can’t paint something from them.


I aim to ramble on about art and stuff here.