Arthur Turner

Born in Houston on November 17, 1940, Charles Arthur Turner is one of the city’s most proficient watercolorists and, until his retirement in 2018, a beloved instructor at the Glassell School of Art for almost fifty years. He earned his BA from North Texas State University in Denton in 1962 and his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills in 1966. After a brief stint teaching at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia (1966-68) he moved home to Houston where he began teaching at the MFAH Museum School and showing his abstract oil paintings at the gallery of Margaret Webb Dreyer. In 1975, Turner was among the inaugural group of artists represented by Moody Gallery. By then he was working almost exclusively on Prismacolor pencil drawings on black Arches paper that combined geometry and more organic, biomorphic forms. Betty Moody encouraged Turner to shift exclusively to watercolors; he took her advice and would stick with her gallery for the next 45 years. Landscapes, pendulums, butterflies, and totally abstracted forms are typical in Turner’s work. He’s shown nearly annually at Moody, with additional solo exhibitions at the Jung Center, Houston; Galveston Art Center; Beeville Art Museum; and The Wynne Home Art Center in Huntsville. He’s participated in countless group shows including Artists Biennial ‘73 at the New Orleans Museum of Art; Images from Space at the Glassell School of Art (1995); and Spirit of the Planet at the Vienna residence of the US Ambassador to the United Nations (2002).

Notes: Pete Gershon interviewed Arthur Turner at his home in the Houston Heights on October 8, 2019.