ARTIST STATEMENT
With my latest collection “Roots to Royalty”, my aim is to encourage and empower those who have been marginalized in both fine art and mainstream media. There is a need for people to take pride their natural beauty and to recognize the strength and potential they have within.
Similar to nature, people undergo numerous transformations along their journeys in life. Each leaf, each face, tells a story of a journey from roots to royalty.
It is a given truth that people have an inherent connection to nature, there is a passionate love for life and all that is alive. The way that we feel when we go outside is more than a simple case of happiness in the face of beauty. There is something about the natural world that feeds our deepest selves and nurtures us from the inside out.
With influence from the Afropunk movement and afrocentric culture, the Roots to Royalty collection explores the beauty shared by both people and nature through a series of portrait and botanical paintings. By remaining highly sensitive to the subtleties of light and shadow I have created dramatic nuances to depict the diversity and beauty nature has provided so generously.
“Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.” — John Ruskin
BIOGRAPHY
Artist Vanessa Turner was born in and lives on, the sunny island of Bermuda. Vanessa has been drawing for as long as she can remember. Since the days of crayons and colouring books together with mom’s white walls, Vanessa has had an immense passion for art. Vanessa’s primary mediums are pastel and charcoal.
Today, Vanessa works full time as an engineer. Balancing a full-time career, family, and a love of art can be very challenging. However, art certainly remains at the core of her heart.