BY ALEX CANTATORE
Staff Reporter
Should you peek through the barred windows of a small, unassuming building in the back yard of a 100-year old house near the corner of Colorado Avenue and Tuolumne Road, you’ll not find the rusty tools, lawnmowers, and boxes of old clothes you might expect. Instead, set against the light blue walls of a room perhaps 300 square feet in size, you’ll see pen and ink sketches taped to the walls, photographs and art books scattered across the floor, and enormous wood panels with artist Emma Thompson hunched over them, tiny paintbrush in hand.
“It’s sort of a cell here, trapped in to think about bloody art all day,” artist Emma Thompson said, “but apart from the bars on the window, it’s a really good gallery,” she quickly corrected.
As she speaks in the natural Turlock sunlight, you can immediately tell that Thompson is not a Central Valley native. British turns of phrase permeate her speech, should you miss the accent that clearly places the artist as an Englishwoman.
A trained painter, Thompson has degrees in printmaking and fine art from the prestigious Goldsmiths University of London art school and a master’s from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. She’s just finished two art shows in London galleries, and has a third planned for November.
It’s that November show that brought Thompson from London to sunny Turlock in the first place.
“I know it sounds a bit bonkers, but London just has one kind of thing going on,” Thompson said.
Tired of the foggy landscapes of London, Thompson had planned to use the central location of Turlock as a jumping off point to visit the great sights of California in search of inspiration. But, from Yosemite to Big Sur, to So Cal beaches and the redwoods, all the landmark locations didn’t seem to bring Thompson the insights she had been seeking.
“If you’re a painter, you need to find new things, new ways to look at things. (The famous California sights have) been so well done before, it looks like a cliché,” she said.
At the end of the day, after visiting the most famously beautiful places in California, Thompson would always come back to her little garden studio here in Turlock. And, interestingly enough, no matter what sights Thompson saw, they all seemed to pale in comparison to little old Turlock.
“Very strangely, I know people slag Turlock off for being a boring town, but I find it incredibly beautiful,” Thompson said. “I’m curious why people put it down; to me it’s meticulously planned with the pride of ownership people take.”
Thompson was amazed by the carefully manicured lawns and gardens, the fields of fruits and nuts, and the beautiful skies and sunshine. She was impressed that this “boring” town holds such an important place in the production of the world’s food, and can even be found in the Guinness Book of World Records for its own unique reasons.
When Thompson saw Turlock, her thoughts trailed to Vincent Van Gogh, the famous Dutch painter.
When Van Gogh first visited the south of France to paint fields of hay and sunflowers, no one had noticed the beauty of that the area. It took Van Gogh’s portrayals of the area to help people see the magnificence of a place that was known primarily as farmland before his work.
“As artists that’s what we need to do,” Thompson said. “We draw out the visual things so we have a shared experience.”
During Thompson’s stay in Turlock for the last three weeks, part of a six-week project to produce the art for her November gallery showing in London, she has observed the Valley way of life. She’s marveled at the people swimming to get away from the heat, the impeccable parks and boulevards, and the scattered homes with unkempt yards, abandoned as victims of the foreclosure crisis.
“Lots of places that haven’t been lived in, it turns to desert in a few weeks,” Thompson said. “It reminds you that this is actually a desert, and that it’s not too far away.”
The artist became intrigued by the interplay between wilderness and the struggle of Valley residents to keep the land green. Her art focuses on the juxtaposition of nature and the daily lives of Turlockers, the crossover between the raw and created beauties that are visible in Turlock.
In one work, a wild forest grows large in the background, inspired by massive eucalyptus trees and conifers in Thompson’s back yard.
The wilderness is almost expressionistic, difficult to grasp, until your vision drifts to an almost too-green patch in the bottom right, with a tiny white plastic lawn chair sitting seemingly out of place. At that moment, the painting clicks, and the vastness of the wilderness awaiting just beyond Turlock’s man-made beauty becomes apparent.?”We can’t understand the wilderness; it’s too big for us to relate,” Thompson said. “Building a town quiets that wilderness for us.”
Not every work treads this fine line. Some focus more on the wilderness, while others explore daily life in Turlock, but the themes of all weave their way through this basic struggle.
While Thompson is in town for the next two weeks completing her work on the Turlock-inspired collection, she hopes to be able to share her art with local enthusiasts. Her studio door is open to anyone interested in seeing the artistic process at work alongside some finished works that will be displayed in a West End gallery.
Thompson hopes to share her art with as many Turlockers as she can, and even hopes to find a gallery to display some of her works locally before the November show begins back in London.
Thompson says she’ll miss her sunny studio here in Turlock and the amazing sights when she leaves in two weeks, and she’s certainly not looking forward to the “run-down, rat infested” studios she calls home back in England.
The change in weather, will, however, be welcomed in some, small way as she returns home.
“It’s very, very hot here,” Thompson said. “I had no idea quite how hot it would be.”
To contact Emma Thompson, e-mail emmasw8@hotmail.co.uk or call 250-0508.
To contact Alex Cantatore, e-mail acantatore@turlockjournal.com or call 624-9141, ext. 2005.
Originally published in the Turlock Journal 8/13/2008.
Retrieved from the Turlock Journal Web site.