1993g_Workers_and_Thinkers_Turner.txt

Division 2. Body.  Section A: Origins. Section B. Life.  Section C: Senses.  
Owner:        Melanie Robbyn Nelson Wright
Chapter IV. Mankind
View:         180 degrees
Type:         Interior with View
Location:     Parent's Home
Perspective:  2 
Season:       Fall
Family:       Workers and Thinkers
Scales:       1
Time:         Late Afternoon
Concept:      Brain
Interval:     40 Years of Living

This painting is of perspectives: workers and thinkers; left brain and right
brain; the creative artist and the detailed administrator; and a statement of
gratitude to my parents, to whom this work is dedicated.  The perspective
leans towards Dad, and his world as a farmer, and towards Mom, and her world
as an educator.  As we stand in the door, this painting would be a standard
one-point perspective, except that it takes into account that we don't stand
still.  We turn to look in one room and then turn to look in the other room.
The secondary image on the right represents the thinkers, specifically
identifying Shakespeare, Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, Beethoven, and Einstein
as ghosts.  Mom is painted out of focus because of a stoke eight years before
the painting, which left her mostly paralyzed on the left side.  Prior to the
stroke she was the Vice-President of Academic Affairs for Southern Utah State
College, laying a foundation for many parts of what is now a University,
including the first and only Jewish Week.  The images on the left represent
the workers of the world, specifically from India, Mongolia, Indonesia,
Mexico, Nigeria, Holland, Germany, Saudi Arabia, China, England, and the
United States.  Melanie, whose painting this is, and her cousin Bridget are
seen in the reflection in the middle window on this side.  Dad is the ultimate
worker, having spent his life as a farmer and running the largest meat packing
operation in southern Utah for over twenty-five years.  His alfalfa fields are
in the background, where you can still hear the meadow larks sing "Howard
Nelson is a good little boy."  It is interesting the vapor trail, when it
comes in on the left directly from the previous painting, changes perspective
so that it goes out the right as if it is on the same level.  And it actually
goes right into the next painting.  The red pick-up was a gift for Dad, and
the mountain in the background is Fiddler's Canyon, from where flood waters
came that filled the basement in 1966.  The guitar, the artist's
representation of the author, is represented in both worlds, with the case to
carry and take care of the instrument on the right and the guitar to play and
create with on the left.  The fun part in painting for the artist, Ken Turner,
is that a lot of times the visual idea occurs first.  He will see a concept
and then the reasoning side of the brain will come back and say that this is
this and that is that.  In an abstract sense the sunburst is repeated in the
patterns at the top of the room, so the abstract foundation of all of the
paintings are the same.  The guitar and the guitar case is a link.  The vapor
trail is another link.  You need to stand back from the paintings about 8 feet
so that the paintings go from looking like brush strokes to looking like an
image.  One of the nicest passages in this painting is just above the
bar-b-que in the reflection in the window, where the spatial relationships is
truly three-dimensional.  The mind absolutely refuses to let that part of the
painting stay flat with the color markers to show depth.