Eric MacLennan

The Open Air Drawing-Room … begins with an antiquated artists drawing group setting up for some landscape painting. Arrival and un-packing of folding stools, easels, flasks, other knick-knacks and sandwiches etc But this is no ordinary show – for the audience will be drawn into the group!

Inspired by JMW Turner. A story that delightfully mixes historical biography with the fast contemporary world we now occupy.

An invitation to slow-down. Paint a stone – for Turner – for The Turner Contemporary!

Selected from…31 stones – a “mini museum” – each one from the coast of the British isles and named after the atmospheric areas of the shipping forecast . These stones were old when Turner was young. They will still be here when we are gone. We consider Time. We consider Art.

Each artist (audience member) also makes a Cyanotype portrait which will be exhibited as a mirror image to the final painting – A Sea of Faces – embracing Turner’s pioneering interest in photography and his desire to find new ways to embrace art.

This project invites the public to engage in setting the world record for a painting that has been created by the largest number of artists!
Co commissioned with Applause Rural Touring and Turner Contemporary, Margate who will host the Turner prize in October 2019.

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These stones – like us – are in a state of transition.

​They were once mountains… and eventually they will be grains of sand on a beach.