Turner Before his Time
“Good art is not what it looks like but what it does to us”
At least that is the way Roy Adzak put it so eloquently, and one of the most famous english artists of all time, one that could draw out the emotions of any person with his tempestuous art was William Turner.
Most artists don’t even realize how much their art affects us the viewer, they can’t really understand what it is that makes them so popular. In fact, Turner, on his death bed was known to have said: “So I am to become a nonentity, am I?” With as famous as he was and still is today, how could he have thought that we would forget him and his work. For more than 6 decades this painter, born to humble parents worked to establish his reputation as one of the best painters in England. Even after all of that he was unsure of the permanence of his work and whether others would understand what the meaning of his work was.
If you ever get to see a Turner exhibit, you can see his capacity for imagination, and innovation. Turner brought to the art world great vision and innovative techniques in light and dark that still influence artists of today. Turners purpose was to bring his painting close to becoming poetry, and he attained that purpose, although in the end, he was still unsure!
