Patrick Turner

Faery & Epic Artist

Contribution to the Show

Pat has been kind enough to allow us to publish a gallery of his amazing artwork. You'll find superb images of the Fey mixed with Mythic Fantasy pieces. IF you visit his site not only will you see more of the same, but you can see some of his futuristic and floral work as well. You can find his Gallery in our galleries section.

Biography

Artist Pat Turner has enjoyed an artistic career spanning some 25 years. Born and raised near Vancouver,
Canada, he is best known, both nationally and internationally, for his strong, realistic painting style and wonderfully creative imagination. His art can be found in both private and corporate collections as well
as on posters, book covers, and other print materials. His artwork has earned numerous awards and his fantasy and science fiction book covers are sold throughout the world.

Traditionally trained in painting, illustration and design, Pat attempts to combine the painting methods and techniques of the 'Old Masters' with the newest digital technologies to create images, and reproductions
of incredible colour, energy and life. Having served several years as a Designer, Photo-Retoucher, and Illustrator, Pat eventually decided to follow his first love - creating artwork - fulltime, and has been operating
Pat Turner  Studios for twenty years.

While the commercial field has given Pat the ability and discipline to render almost anything he is called upon to paint, his own work in the Fine Art and Publishing areas has always leaned towards the worlds of fantasy and science fiction. He grew up reading the works of J R R Tolkien and C S Lewis and his biggest artistic influences came from artists like J.W. Waterhouse, The Pre-Raphaelites, Maxfield Parrish and Frank Frazetta.

Pat's work finds tremendous inspiration in the deep wells of neo-lithic spiritual belief, mythology, creation myth and historical folklore of many lands. Real-world beliefs turned to other-world fantasies by time. 

The artist is always interested in any work or partnerships which allow him to flex his creative imagination.

"Having spent much of my early career manning paintbrush, airbrush and digital brush for commercial interests, it became clear that to maintain a balance and to draw my mind back to it's center, I needed an
artistic release that was completely counter and across the spectrum from what I had been doing.

"I went looking for something that needed an artistic voice; something that could provide a moments peace and beauty in a modern world with so precious little of both those commodities. Nature can do this - but there are already many artists who paint nature. I wanted to give form to something closer to our own human spirit; something that we might celebrate within ourselves. It seems we are constantly looking for beauty outside ourselves as though there were none to be found within us.

"After some searching, I found that history and myth held much of what I had been looking for. Having been
influenced by science and technology as if it were a religion, I once again found balance by looking as far off to the horizon as I could. It was in classical myth and the stories handed down through generations that I once again found some of the beauty of what it was to be human.

"These stories, often born in the twilight grays of a dim and nearly forgotten past, are given color and life by those who retell them. Far from being fairy tales or mere myths, these were the sacred words and beliefs of our human forefathers who lived for thousands of years as a part of the natural world, rather than apart from that world. There is a beauty, wonder and magic in these stories that speaks to a beautiful world that still exists in all of us. It's a world called the human spirit, where mystery, magic and reality all walk hand in hand. This is a place where your prayers may get an answer, your imagination can become reality and your hopes for tomorrow may be realized."

What is a rainbow?

"You may find something interesting about yourself in your answer to that question. Science would tell
you that it is simply the refraction of light through water particles suspended in the atmosphere. If, like me, you find that explanation to be simplistic, overly narrow in definition and to a certain extent insulting to the greater human consciousness then we share something in common and you may find more in my artwork than what simply meets the eye.

"I like to believe that a rainbow is a quiet message from someone, somewhere to look for a deeper meaning, a deeper mystery and a deeper beauty in those roads we walk every day. Over the ages, the forge of our human imagination has provided us with so many wonderful, beautiful and hopeful explanations  - think of some of those that you recall now,  from poets or from childhood, and touch that place within you where beauty still lies full.

"Science, technology and the modern world would seek to remove those mysteries; to give you answers where once you had the full canvas of your senses and the fertile ground of your imagination to paint a canvas that was so much more.

"And when all the questions answered, and all the mysteries solved, what then for that most wonderful part of us - imagination?"

© All non-original items about Patrick Turner on this page are copyright Patrick Turner 2009