Norman Turner curriculum vitae
Norman Turner was born in 1939 in Storm Lake Iowa and grew up in Iowa City. His grandfather was governor of Iowa 1930-32, and his father was a composer and professor of music at the University of Iowa. On his mother’s side, he is descended from the Canadian branch of a Huguenot family, the Lamblys. In high school he wrote music that was performed by the chorus and band. At eighteen he studied music composition at the University of Colorado. At nineteen he learned to cast sculpture in bronze and was a non-matriculating undergraduate in the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, working with Vance Bourjaily, Donald Justice and Philip Roth. In 1963 he moved to New York City and, in 1964, became a founding student of the New York Studio School, where his teachers were Charles Cajori, Mercedes Matter, George Spaventa and Esteban Vicente. He now lives in New Paltz with his wife and daughter and divides his time between the Shawangunk mountains and Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. He has had fourteen solo shows, has participated in over thirty group shows, has taught at Queens College and the New York Studio School, has directed a summer landscape painting program for students from nineteen colleges, and has lectured at a number of colleges and universities around the Northeast. His work has been reviewed in Art News and Art in America, and his essays on art have appeared in peer-reviewed journals. Writing in the New York Times, John Caldwell described his paintings as “electrified Van Gogh.”
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2005 The Bakery (New Paltz, NY).
2003 The Art Center in Hargate, St. Paul’s School (Concord, NH).
1997 Lorraine Kessler Gallery (Poughkeepsie, NY).
1996 Bowery Gallery (New York City).
1995 Wagner College (Staten Island, NY).
1993 Smith College (Northamption MA).
1993 Bowery Gallery (New York City).
1989 College of William and Mary (Williamsburg, VA).
1989 Bowery Gallery (New York City).
1980 Jersey City Museum (Jersey City, NJ).
1979 Ingber Gallery (New York City).
1977 Ingber Gallery (New York City).
1975 Green Mountain Gallery (New York City).
1972 Green Mountain Gallery (New York City).
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2005 Washington Art Association.
2003 New York Studio School. Chuck O'Connor and Norman Turner. Curated by Charles Cajori.
2002 Marist Art Gallery. Six Approaches.
1999 Gross-McCleaf Gallery. Contemporary Landscapes.
1995 Albright-Knox Art Gallery. New York Collection 1995.
1994 Albright-Knox Art Gallery. New York Collection 1994
1993 Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London. Landscape Observed: Drawings by Four
Contemporary Artists.
1992 New York Studio School. Curated by Peter Agostini. Alumni Exhibition.
1986 Ammo. Expanding Views: Vanishing Points.
1986 Blue Mountain Gallery. Green Mountain Retrospective.
1986 Bank Street College of Education. Caumsett Painters.
1985 Ingber Gallery. Survival of the Fittest.
1985 The New York Studio School. New York Studio School Twentieth Anniversary
Exhibition.
1983 Artists For Environment Foundation, Wallpack Center. The Wallpack Valley: Contemporary
Views of the Region.
1983 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship Exhibition.
1982 Artists' Choice Museum traveling exhibition. The Reading Public Museum, Queens
Museum, Colby College Art Museum and The Butler Institute of American Art. Painted Light.
1981 University of Vermont. Physical Environment as Raw Material: Four Artists in Vermont.
1980 Gross Mc Cleaf Gallery, Philadelphia. Artists For Environment: The First Decade.
1980 Artists' Choice Museum, (Fischbach Gallery). Younger Artists.
1978 Artists For Environment Foundation, Wallpack Center. Six Viewpoints: The Wallpack Valley.
1977 Hopper House, Nyack. New Paintings From the Delaware Water Gap.
1975 Long Island University. The American Landscape: Two Views.
1974 Stamford Museum. Joy.
1974 Brooklyn College. Three Artists.
1971 Brooklyn Museum. Drawing Each Other.
1971 Fleming Museum, Vermont. New England Landscapes.
1971 Swarthmore College. Green Mountain Artists at Swarthmore College.
1970 SUNY Albany. The Representational Spirit.
1969-1971 American Federation of Art traveling exhibition. US and Canada. Painterly Realism.
1969 Green Mountain Gallery. Four Young Painters.
REVIEWED
The New York Sunday Times, William Zimmer, 12/1/02, p. 10, Westchester.
The Flat Hat (College of William and Mary), 12/89.
The New York Sunday Times, John Caldwell, 10/26/80, p. 30, New Jersey.
Art in America, Jed Perl, May - June, 1977, p. 119.
Arts, Allen Ellenzweig, 4/77.
Arts, Ellen Lubell 4/75.
Arts, Laura Schwarz 2/73.
Arts, 2/72.
Art News, Lawrence Campbell 11/72.
Art News, 10/69.
WRITINGS
"Cézanne, Wagner, Modulation," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism ,
vol. 56, no. 4, Fall, 1998.
“Landscape: Close to Nature. Norman Turner on Gretna Campbell,” Modern
Painters, Summer, 1998.
"The Semantic of Linear Perspective," Philisophical Forum, vol. XXVII, No. 4,
Summer, 1996.
"Thinking of Gretna Campbell," expanded version. A booklet printed by Tibor de
Nagy Gallery, New York, 1996.
“Some Questions About E. H. Gombrich on Perspective,” Journal of Aesthetics
and Art Criticism, vol. 50, no. 2, Spring, 1992.
“Thinking of Gretna Campbell,” Transfer, #5, Fall 1990.
Letter to the Editor on Stanley Lewis, New Criterion, May, 1990.
“Stella on Caravaggio,” Arts, Summer 1985.
“Detaching the Retina” (letter to the editor), New York Review of Books, XXIX,
no. 8 (May 13, 1982).
“Painterly Landscape,” Arts, April 1982.
“Subjective Curvature in Late Cézanne,” Art Bulletin, December 1981.
“Notes on Landscape Space,” Artists' Choice Museum Newsletter, November
1982.
“Louis Finkelstein,” Arts, January 1982.
“Charles Cajori,” Arts, April 1981.
“Paul Resika,” Arts, May 1979.
“Lucien Day,” Arts, May 1978.
“Earl Kerkam,” Arts, April 1978.
“Lois Dodd,” Arts, March 1978.
“Alice Neel,” Arts, December 1977.
“Esteban Vicente,” Arts, June 1977.
HONORS AND AWARDS
Listed in Who's Who in American Art
Artists Fellowship, New Jersey State Council on the Arts (1981)
Artist in Residence, Artists For Environment Foundation (1978).
OTHER ACTIVITIES
GUEST CURATOR
“Painterly Landscape,” exhibition and catalogue essay, Jersey City Museum, 1982. Funded by a grant from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.
PRODUCER/DIRECTOR
“Caumsett Art,” broadcast on CUNY-TV September 9, 1988. Produced with a grant from the Queens College Alumni Association in conjunction with CIMS, edited by Richard Billay and Jeffry Lane.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Cultural Coalition of Staten Island, 1991-93. CCOSI is the re-granting agency for Richmond County.
LECTURES
"More Readings from 'An Essay on Cézanne'."
New York Studio School, 2002.
"Existential Perspective" (Readings from 'An Essay on Cézanne').
Dartmouth College, 2001
New York Studio School, 2000
"Why I Paint (Outdoors)."
Dartmouth College, 1999.
New York Studio School, 1996.
"Thinking of Gretna Campbell."
Wright State University, 1999.
The American University, 1995.
Dartmouth College, 1995.
New York Studio School, 1994.
“Reading Cézanne,” New School for Social Research, fall, 1990. (A series of five one-hour slide talks:
“Cézanne: An Overview,” “Cézanne and Impressionism,” “Cézanne and Modernism,” “Formalism and Anti-formalism” and “Subjective Curvature in Late Cézanne.”)
“Cézanne’s Concept of Space,”
College of William and Mary, 1989.
New York Studio School, 1982.
“On my Own Efforts as a Painter.”
New York Academy, 1993.
Caumsett Art, 1989, 1988, 1987, 1986, 1985.
Artists For Environment, 1982, 1981, 1980, 1979, 1977.
TEACHING
Painting and drawing faculty, New York Studio School, 2001-2003.
Drawing Faculty, New York Studio School, spring 1996, Spring 1995, fall 1994.
Painting II, SUNY Purchase, fall 1994.
Painting Faculty, New York Studio School, summer 1993
Director/teacher, Caumsett Art, 1985 - 1989. A resident summer painting program for
undergraduates, graduates and post-graduates, run by Queens College at Caumsett State Park. Duties included publicity, recruiting students and faculty, fundraising, teaching undergraduate and graduate students and running the program on a day-by-day basis. Students came from Boston University, Brandeis, Brown, Cornell, the Maryland Institute, Hobart and William Smith, Parsons School of Design, Knox College, Miami University, Dartmouth, the University of Arkansas, the University of California (Santa Barbara), Indiana University, the Kansas City Art Institute, SUNY New Paltz, SUNY Purchase, Queens College, Vassar and Yale.
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Queens College, 1982 - 1990. Courses taught: Drawing
I, Drawing II, Introduction to Painting, Painting I, Painting II, Two-dimensional Design.
Painting Faculty, New York Studio School, fall 1982 - Spring 1984.
Painting and Drawing Instructor, Artists For Environment Foundation, 1978 - 1979.
Students were from schools belonging to the Union of Independent Colleges of Art.
Visiting Artist, Artists For Environment Foundation, 1982, 1981, 1980, 1979, 1977,
1976.
EDUCATION
University of Colorado, Boulder (1957-1958).
University of Iowa, Iowa City (1958-1960).
New York Studio School, New York City (1964-1965).
Empire State College, SUNY, Old Westbury (1979). Bachelor of Arts in Painting.