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Although a first glance at Christine Turner's paintings suggests that the artist is acting as observer—recording moments in the lives of others—Christine Turner's work is intensely personal. She observes people closely, taking notes, sketching, then painting them into various stage settings. She ponders over her players, speculating on their responses—and frequently joins the cast herself.
All the works show recognisable human bonds as we play our eternal games of love, loneliness, anguish, indecision ... with perhaps the whole gamut of relationships summed up in the major work of the exhibition; a piece on three panels, entitled The Card Players.
Despite an odd moment of humour, as in Cabaret, the works are marked by an absolute seriousness. This is heightened by the way the artist manipulates the limbs of her puppets, as if breaking their bones and realigning them out of kilter.
Christine's paintings, of acrylic and collage, begin as abstractions with a definitive underlying structure. The linear figures are then built up decisively into her proposed design using preliminary sketches. To add to the complexity of her surfaces she includes paper monoprinted with her own designs.