Beyond The Varnish: Turner (A Private View) by Steve Bird

t must be stressed that, as the subtitle suggests, this is a “private view” of Turner’s world. To have attempted some kind of literal depiction would have been pointless. There was and can ever be only one Turner. These three and a half minutes are merely an individual response to the passion and intensity of Turner’s paintings. Although small segments of the original paintings have been utilised as pure colour material, no one painting has been depicted, in a deliberate attempt to use the tools of twenty-first century computer animation, to generate an emotional response to the whole of Turner’s output.

More than thirty years prior to the official birth of Impressionism, one extraordinary man was hanging indistinct explosions of light and colour on the walls of no less a bastion of the art establishment than The Royal Academy in London. Joseph Mallord William Turner was born within sight of the River Thames on the 23rd April 1775 and throughout his long and productive life, he developed a vision that, by the time of his death (in another room overlooking the same river) on the 19th December 1851, would see him bequeathing to the nation some 350 paintings, and nearly 20,000 watercolours and drawings. This video is an attempt to encapsulate a little of the essence of his vast oeuvre.

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For further information on my work, visit my website at www.soundmangler.co.uk