Artist Spotlight: Ray Turner

Ray Turner’s journey into the world of art began not with a childhood obsession, but instead, on a whim. A former football and baseball player at Eastern Oregon State College, Turner stumbled into the art world during his junior year when he enrolled in a beginning drawing class, which became his first true exposure to art. Later, a brochure for ArtCenter College of Design, handed to him by his instructor, changed the trajectory of his life. He quickly switched his major from business to art, and he made his way to Pasadena.

Turner doesn’t define himself by a particular style. Instead, he allows ideas to dictate the form and medium of his work. Turner’s process is rooted in intuition and discipline. For him, being an artist means maintaining “a daily practice of craft,” and seeing the world “through a lens of creativity and observation.”

His choice of medium, predominantly oil paint on glass panes, reveals as much about his sensibility as his philosophy. “I love the physicality of oil paint,” he explains. “It has the ability to become object-like. It floats on the surface.” His use of glass is particularly striking: “It’s seductive,” he says. “Glass is fragile, like people. When you look at the portraits, you also see your reflection. It’s a metaphor: the fragility, the layers, the shadow it casts on the wall.”

Although Turner is widely known for his personal, expressionistic portraits, likeness is not his priority. “That’s the last thing I care about,” he admits. “I’m experimenting with paint, letting it take me somewhere new.” His creative mantra is to “get out of the way”, to act as a conduit for something greater. “It just flows. I’m doing the work, but I’m not trying to control it.”

That surrender to the process also informs when a piece is considered finished. “A painting is never really done,” he says. “You can always do more, but that doesn’t mean it’s better. It just makes it different.” With each layer of paint, each reworking of color and form, Turner believes that while the piece may not improve, the artist does. 

“When I pick up the brush, I’m fully in it.”

To aspiring artists, Turner offers advice as unpretentious as his process: “Your voice will come out through practice. Just do the work. Don’t overthink.” He encourages emerging creators to question everything, to explore what they don’t like as a way of uncovering what they do. “Ask questions,” he says. “When they’re framed properly, the answers come easily.”

Looking back on his own life, Turner wouldn’t change a thing. “I wouldn’t be where I am without what I’ve gone through,” he says. In a world often obsessed with labels and polished narratives, Ray Turner stands apart as an artist who listens more than he speaks, and paints not to be seen, but to see more clearly.