James Turrell - Installation Artist - (born 1943)

' I make spaces that apprehend light for our perception, and in some ways gather it, or seem to hold it… my work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing.'

James Turrell

Turrell is an avid aviator and considers the sky as his studio, material and canvas. He trained as a perceptual psychologist which undoubtedly has informed his work. Interestingly I have noted that many of the contemporary light artists have also trained in mathematics, this must be related to the technicality of the work. In the late 60's he created his first light projections and then went onto participate in an Art and Technology program at the Los Angeles County Museum with artist Robert Irwin and psychologist Edward Wortz which investigated perceptual phenomena. Following his experimentation at the Mendota Hotel in Santa Monica where he sealed off windows to allow natural and artificial light to enter the darkened spaces in specific ways led to his series of work 'The Medoda Stoppages'. Most famous for his purchase and subsequent renovations of the Roden Crator, an extinct volcano in the Arizona Desert he's turning the crater into a massive naked eye observatory, designed specifically for the viewing of celestial phenomena, all his other work encloses the viewer in order to control their perception of light.

Skyspace

His work on 'Skyspaces' started in the 1970's and they involve an enclosed space open to the sky through a hole in the roof. The viewer sits inside to view the sky through the opening in the roof.There are now over 60 of these Skyspaces installed across the globe.

 His work with human perception is toyed with with his light tunnels and light projections which create shapes that appear to have mass and weight but they are purely created by light, his exhibitions play with the human senses.

Influence on my work:

Turrell I find incredible, I have been wrestling with this question about how to portray infinity and space in an image. He has been the first artist I discovered that for me captured the essence of what Im after. Although he is a light artist, I shall never be one of those, he has helped me think about how I can create illusion through my work, specifically currently through paint. How do I capture infinity on a canvas? My plan is to work and blend Turrells perceptual magic with that of the abstract expressionists, I need to experiment but he has certainly given me the ideas and creativity I need to take my work to the next step.

References:
http://jamesturrell.com
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/15/james-turrell-retrospective-review-light-and-colour-reach-for-the-sublime
http://rodencrater.com/james
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Turrell
http://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag02/nov02/turrell/turrell.shtml