Annie Luke Turner

Annie’s work is born in the memories and emotions evoked by place and space. She is based in the Lake District in the North West of England, but often works at her small studio in the post-industrial port of Hull. As a result of these two contrasting landscapes, Annie’s paintings respond to both rural and urban environments.

After walks, drives and journeys, Annie’s work begins to evolve from a feeling for a place, it might be the light, it might be the shapes, the colours, the sense for what may have gone on there before. She is particularly drawn to understanding and investigating the history of a place. Then there’s time spent in the place and sketching – often quite figuratively, sometimes with eyes closed using the memory of the place to guide the pen.

These sketches might do nothing for months or they might go straight into the studio, sometimes onto paper, sometimes onto canvas. There’s no set plan.​

Whether on paper or canvas, what usually happens next is a process of mark-making. Probably barefoot, often with eyes closed, bringing back the feeling of the place, more of an emotional response than an attempt to draw, though sometimes there’s that too. Sometimes other places find their way in there, shapes and features that become clear but were never consciously placed. These might be lines or shapes scratched into the canvas, drawn or painted with sticks. Parts of other paintings might be torn out of others and moulded in. Sometimes they disappear forever.

​Then colour, sometimes thick and textural, other times just a translucent surface, sometimes scraped off entirely. This process can take weeks and months. Paint applied and removed, marks made and hidden then scraped back and revealed.

And then one day the painting says done.

The canvas has become a landscape and a story in itself, like the shapes of the buildings of a long-gone village revealed in the colours of sun scorched turf.

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