Through June 3: "Ray Turner: Population"

Museum of Glass

By Alec Clayton on December 30, 2012

Ray Turner's exhibition Population at Museum of Glass is a stunning show. Turner, a former Stadium High student from Tacoma now living in California, is showing almost 200 portraits painted on glass with lush oil paint slathered on the slick surface like cement poured from a mixer and spread with a yard rake. Each painting is 12-inches square. His colors and textures are breathtaking, and his likenesses of real people - not idealized or beautified in any way - offer glimpses into the souls of his sitters. They might as well stand naked and tell their innermost secrets.

This show is a psychological tour de force and an artistic tour de force. It is Lucien Freud meets Chuck Close. Turner's portraits have the intensity of Freud's figures, and like the best of Close's portraits they are simultaneously realistic and stylized, painted with a direct, head-on point of view and isolated on flat, unadorned backgrounds.

Read Alec Claytion's full review of Ray Turner: Population in the Weekly Volcano's Arts section.

MUSEUM OF GLASS, RAY TURNER: POPULATION, THROUGH JUNE 3, 2013, 10 A.M. TO 5 P.M. WEDNESDAY-SATURDAY, NOON TO 5 P.M. SUNDAY, $5-$12, 1801 DOCK ST. TACOMA, 866.4MUSEUM

LINK: Additional Ray Turner thoughts on our blog Spew