Louis Turpin
A Diary of Louis Turpin
Louis Turpin at Great Dixter.
“We live in a country blessed with extraordinary and inspiring gardens.”
Can you walk us through your early years and share how your love of music and art developed?
Louis. I grew up in a very creative environment; my parents were part of the post-war London art scene. They were good party-givers, with Jazz, Calypso and Highlife always playing in our Brixton home. My father, Digby, was a film director and animator who won a BAFTA Award for animation in the 50s. My mother had studied Fine Art at St Martins, London.
I have always been equally drawn to visual arts and music and could see no good reason to concentrate on just one of these disciplines. I enjoyed painting and drawing; inevitably, I was good at this at school. I also developed my interest in music and became more involved in rural American Blues. I had always sung, but I also began experimenting with other instruments. The trumpet looked appealing, but I realised I was more at home with the guitar.
Meanwhile, my interest in the visual arts continued. I remember my grandmother saying to me, you must make a choice; you must do one thing or the other. I didn’t think so; I carried on with both.
I played a lot of music while still at school, which was a huge pleasure and an introduction to the extraordinary creative returns of playing with like-minded musicians. I was the youngest, so it was a moment of decision for me when the others went to university, especially as I was the vocalist in the band. What next musically?
“As you know, those early years are hugely important for our creative development and in forming our ideas on how best we should live our lives.”
On leaving school, I began studying architecture, and by the fourth term, I realised I was more interested in the two-dimensional depiction of architecture. So, fairly incomplete in a discipline that was essentially three-dimensional. I decided to change direction and left the course. I worked on a coal wharf over the winter, and when spring came, I began manufacturing painted articulated wooden toy soldiers, an idea I had developed a few years earlier with a good friend. These were sold at Heals and Liberty.
Eventually, in the autumn of 1968 I enrolled on a Foundation course at Guildford Art School. This was followed by a three-year Fine Art course at Falmouth Art School. Three years, during which time I began to work out how I wanted to express myself visually. Abstract canvasses progressed to live-action 16mm short films and, finally, a 10-minute animated film. All, of course, hand-drawn on cel or animated under a Rostrum Camera.
I graduated and stayed in Cornwall for some time but eventually decided to move back to London, where I worked in film and architectural model making. In the meantime, my parents had moved to the Isle of Oxney, and my father was animating again. He called me to say he had been offered a 10-minute short for the World Health Organisation (WHO) and asked me to come and work on it with him. In the 1970s, animation was still hand-drawn on cels. The brief was to be informative and entertaining and to create an aide for the WHO nurse who would use it. This was my first introduction to life on the South Coast.
“Rye and its surroundings have long been magnets for creatives of all disciplines, musicians, artists, writers, and architects, and it was pretty obvious why I stayed.”
The animation continued, and the local pub offered a great venue for live music. I also began painting but needed a studio. A farmer offered me a cottage on his farm, which became my home and my studio, with extraordinary views from the studio window. Dav, my wife, joined me, and we grew vegetables and raised chickens. I settled into a work pattern of animating for a week and painting the following week.
Thinking back to my early days in the cottage, looking through the window and realising it was a fantastic subject for my painting. I always respond to the landscapes around me.
At the farm, my paintings evolved, and the landscapes around me inspired me. Through my studio window, my paintings became figurative. I started painting people in interiors, often Dav and our friends. Then, gradually, I began to get commissions to paint portraits of my neighbours, Farmers, Publicans, Artists, etc., and their families. It was becoming increasingly difficult to continue the two disciplines, and I decided that I had to concentrate on the painting and stop the animation.
So, how did you move from the interiors and portraits into painting landscapes and gardens?
Louis. I had already been introduced to Great Dixter by the head gardener at that time, Romke and I realised how stunning this garden was. Great Dixter became the backdrop for a large portrait I was working on.
A few years later, I was told about Sissinghurst Castle and encouraged to visit. I arrived and Vita Sackville-West’s original gardeners Pam Schwerdt and Sibylle Kreutzberger were still gardening there at that time and I was almost the only visitor. This visit changed the emphasis of my painting. Sissinghurst is designed as a series of open-air rooms, each differently themed, and the gardens were so full of colour, form and magic. I was bowled over. There seemed to be a continuation of the interiors I was painting at the time. Somehow, it was a natural progression to paint these gardens.
“My painting process, from the idea to the canvas, is quite instinctual. My first move back at the studio is to cover the canvas in paint to make the basic notes for the painting which then sits on the wall until I am ready to complete it.”
Gradually, gardens and landscapes became the main subjects of my paintings. I travelled around the country having exhibitions in some excellent galleries from Bath to Cumbria. I was constantly looking at new gardens with my wife and family. I became involved with the National Garden Scheme. At first, it was in mixed shows, and later, in solo exhibitions, looking at gardens in specific areas, including Yorkshire, Cumbria, Bucks, and Oxfordshire.
Independently, we visited gardens such as Trebah, a privately owned valley garden in Cornwall leading down to a secluded beach, and reached through a forest of Gunnera. By contrast, I visited Levens Hall, an ancient garden in Cumbria. I became interested in the gardens designed by Gertrude Jekyll who, working alongside the Arts and Crafts Architect Edwin Lutyens, profoundly affected English gardens.
Throughout this long time, I continued to play music with some fantastic musicians. We performed in pubs, clubs and music festivals. The two different disciplines are so disparate, but from my perspective, they complement one another. The playing, for me, had to stop in 2018 when I was diagnosed with cancer.
Are you happy to share a little about your recent ill health and recovery?
Louis. I was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2018. Despite every effort, the cancer did not respond to treatment, and I am here today because I took part in a trial at The Royal Marsden Hospital. My daughter-in-law mentioned an immunotherapy trial they had been reading about, and I followed up on it. By this time, the cancer had spread everywhere, and after an initial consultation, I was accepted for the trial. After seven courses of this new trial drug, I was cancer-free. Sadly, this trial, while fantastic for me, had only partial success. The research continues, of course.
I was able to return to painting again and had a solo show at Rye Art Gallery in 2021. Since then, I’ve had open heart surgery. The team was extraordinary. I didn’t work for eight months; I used that time to recover and mend with the constant support of Davida. I had to feel good and ready before returning to painting. I’ve been able to continue painting, and there are more exhibitions in the pipeline.
“For me, the driving force for recovery is to reclaim as much of the life I had before as I possibly can.”
It is great to see you’ve been painting again for a while now. Tell us about Great Dixter and your new work.
Louis. Sometime before I had the open-heart surgery, I had thought how exciting it would be to paint the gardens at Great Dixter in the frost. I spoke with Fergus Garrett (RyeZine No.8) about calling in when there was a frost. I realised that the gardens at Great Dixter continue to look beautiful in January when it is closed to the public, and you can see the bones of the place. It’s a living, functioning space that changes all the time.
I began developing the idea of a series of paintings covering the complete annual cycle. The gardens at Great Dixter are Fergus’s canvas. I am a visitor, popping in and out periodically as Fergus and the team plant more things throughout the year. On these visits, I noticed that change was constant, and I realised it would be interesting to record a garden year, month by month, in paintings: A Diary of Great Dixter.
I had an exhibition in The Great Hall at Dixter in 2016, and I suspect this was the moment when I began to form the idea of a Dixter Diary in paintings. I plan to complete the series of paintings by the beginning of October and will publicise the event on my website.
“Great Dixter is a kaleidoscope of colour, and Louis’s visuals enhance that and make it even more dramatic. The exuberance of Dixter comes through in his paintings.”
Fergus Garrett VMH
Head Gardener and CEO of the Great Dixter Charitable Trust
Great Dixter House & Gardens, Northiam, East Sussex TN31 6PH
www.greatdixter.co.uk | @greatdixterofficial
Louis Turpin - Artist
www.louisturpin.com
louisturpinartist@hotmail.com