Nancy Garrett Turner was born in Mobile, Alabama, 1958; raised in Pensacola, Florida, and for the past 30 years has lived in Biloxi, Mississippi.  Nancy began her career as a professional Artist in 1976.  She has worked extensively, not only in the field of fine art, but also in commercial art and portraiture.  Nancy works in various mediums including acrylic, watercolor, pastels, pen and ink and graphite. Committed to her passion for expanding her knowledge of both art history and the technical execution of numerous mediums, Turner eagerly begins each day open to the infinite adventures and possibilities of all that is Art.     

“I create, I draw, and I paint.  I don't question why. It has always been, and will always be, that way.  It is who I am.  I sit down at my easel and begin at one point; after a long, exhausting, exuberant journey I end eventually at another point.  It is as simple and complex as that.  Painting transcends me into a world where I feel complete, accepted and safe.  It is a world in which I feel the closest to God; that I am doing the work He put me here to do.  I do not paint with the motivation for recognition, for winning entries, for love of money nor to carve out my place in history.  I paint because to create and express is the most fulfilling action I will experience in my lifetime.  Although it can be considered a selfish endeavor, I also paint to hopefully touch others; to tell them that they are not alone in their struggles and failures as well as their celebrations and successes.  I paint to communicate emotions that are too strong or too complicated to be expressed in words.   

I consider my work to belong in the classification of Symbolism. Symbolist artists seek to express individual emotional experience through the subtle and suggestive use of highly symbolized language. The symbols used in Symbolism are not the familiar use of objects belonging to mainstream conventional imagery, but intensely personal, private, obscure and ambiguous references into both the mind of the artist and of the viewer.  

What the symbols and their placement say to me may express something entirely different to each viewer.  The symbols may also take on an even different meaning at a different time to the same individual.  I hope to invite the intellectual mind, the emotional mind, and the subconscious mind of the viewer to observe collectively.  My paintings are for those who like to think, discover, uncover, question, solve and understand.  My goal is to allow the viewer time for introspection either through stepping back and seeing the mood of the elemental sum, or by coming closer to examine the individual elements one by one.  My paintings are my prayers that even if only for a moment, that you, the viewer, and I, in our respective human experiences, can stand on common ground together and truly understand one another.”

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