HOPE TURNBULL

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My practice stems from looking. As a painter, making my work comes from the curiosity around re-evaluating the way in which I see. I look for my place within a space or person. I look for small objects, shafts of light or shadows that speak to the way in which I experience space.

 

For me, painting acts in place of a diary: a way to capture private, hidden moments and the emotions in my daily life. The paintings act as a snapshot of a moment; the figures are often engrossed in a moment of reverie while enacting the daily routines of life, washing, bathing, ironing, or just sitting.

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My work engages in a  discussion of three interweaving strands: reverie, the everyday, and the figure in space. I look to Marcel Proust, Giorgio Agamben, Gaston Bachelard, and the concept of Wabi Sabi to put words to the space at the edge of consciousness, our relationship to it, how we enter the space, how we depict it and what happens in the state of reverie in interior spaces

 

 In a recent body of work, Sensation , I look at the experience of sauna. The hot stickiness of it, the body in an uncomfortable environment. It is a place without distraction; there is no external stimuli. It is one of the last places that we can access our relationship to the sensations felt within our body.