Theodore (Ted) Turner was a prolific artist who served as a professor of art at the University of Virginia and Dartmouth College. He studied art in Virginia at Richmond Professional Institute (now Virginia Commonwealth University) and in New York City, where he received an MFA from New York University. By the end of his life, Turner had become a fixture in Charlottesville: he was a professor at the UVA, had a studio in the popular Belmont neighborhood, and painted scenes from his surrounding community.
Highly expressive and typically colorful, Turner’s paintings ranged from soft impressionistic seascapes to impasto abstracts. He utilized an impressive variety of mediums including watercolor, acrylic, block print, found object, and oil. Turner utilized color in unique and untraditional ways that served to enhance some of his more unexpected subject matter. His oeuvre includes a vast variety of subject matter including landscapes, seascapes, nudes, colorful abstracts, portraits, and urban scenes. The frantic and heavy brushstrokes as well as, in his later work, the bawdy words he chose to include in his paintings seem to show us a glimpse of the artist’s personality.
Several years ago, Ken acquired the residual artwork from the heirs of Ted and Sally Turner, which included several hundred works of art. The collection includes not only Ted’s work, but also his wife Sally’s including the mauve portrait of a couple and mountain landscape shown below. Her pieces include numerous portraits, all of which possess great character and display her skill as an artist. Since acquiring the collection, Ken has been actively working to share the collection with collectors and art lovers alike. Several pieces are available on our online store, but if you have any questions about the collection, please contact us at ken@kenfarmerllc.com.
