I describe the portraits I am currently doing as head paintings. I started painting heads in 1983. My interest in painting different communities comes from my belief that we are all unique but also much the same. We are strong, weak, kind, mean, thoughtful, thoughtless, courageous and full of fear. We are every adjective you can think of and its opposite. Our face tells our story. The collective of all these portraits is telling ours.
Population
I began painting portraits for the current body of work and traveling exhibition called Population in 2007. My interest in going to different cities to meet and paint a cross section of the populace in communities across our country and abroad began in my hometown of Pasadena. What has continued to motivate me is the common thread of our human experiences, the joys and sorrows, the victories and failures are all contained in the face.
Good Man Bad Man
The Good Man Bad Man series of images began about ten years ago. I gave the first one to my son Henry. He was intrigued with the concept of the bad guy, and would often ask about “bad guys”. Who are the bad guys and who are the good guys? We are all faced with the same troubling dilemma, living with the polarities of life or death, good and evil. I often feel it is more comfortable believing there is a grey zone where the bad guy is not that bad, or is mostly good; evil is too strong a word, it’s uncomfortable. The idea that a person can be mostly bad is foreign to me, except for what I have read, or heard about. Evil seems obscure, yet, I have found that kind of thinking dangerous; there is a cunning in the grey fog. For me the face holds that conflict that resides in each of us. The Good Man Bad Man pieces exaggerate both sides of our human experience, the haunting of past and present histories, secrets and aspirations, with two forces colliding in constant strife, good often dominating, but never fully overcoming the other side.
-Ray Turner
Ray Turner lives in Pasadena, California, where he earned his BFA,then worked for thirteen years as a professor of painting and drawing at the Art Center College of Design. His work has been showcased in exhibits throughout Southern California as well as in museums and galleries in San Francisco, New York, Miami, Chicago, Boston, and Berlin.
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