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Artist produces beautiful work Diverging creative interests evident in painting of raven taking flight
Shawn Giilck
Northern News Services
Published Thursday, July 25, 2013
INUVIK
Maidie-Anne Turner is one artist who knows how to deliver.
Maidie-Anne Turner of Inuvik produces startling and compelling artwork. This work featuring a raven taking flight is set on a royal purple background. - Shawn Giilck/NNSL photo
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The multi-media whiz is a long-time Canada Post employee at the Inuvik post office who plays with stained glass, painting and carving as the spirit moves her.
"I started with stained glass and I always draw my own patterns," she said. "At night watching TV I don't like to be sitting there doing nothing, so I started doing some drawings and it's gone from there.
"I learned from scratch, and I was never really an artsy kid."
Turner said she liked carving in school, but that was the extent of her artistic impulses when she was younger.
She's lived in Inuvik for 40 years and this is where her passion for art flowered.
"It's amazing how fast that went by," she said. "We raised two children here."
Her artwork is very much driven, if not dictated, by her wildly diverging creative interests and wandering attention span.
"The less I think about what I'm doing the better it is," she declared. "I may be a little ADD (attention-deficit disorder)."
Turner was one of the local artists displaying work at the Great Northern Arts Festival. She guessed it was about the seventh year she's attended.
As the interview progressed, Turner was working on a stunning and esoteric painting of a raven taking flight. Against a royal purple background, the raven exploding into the air was beyond eye catching.
"I find ravens fascinating," she said.
Some of her other work present was also very impressive.
A subtle but superb charcoal rending of a forest setting fooled the eye into wondering if it was some sort of sepia-tinted homage to black-and-white photos.
An Inukshuk against a blazing burnt-orange sunset also drew the eye irresistibly.
At the moment, she's put aside her passion for stained glass and is busy exploring other creative mediums.
Some of her work is realistic while others verge on the abstract.
She's a bit shy about exhibiting her work, but the "stage fright" has slowly dissipated over the years.
She has exhibited some of her work at the Cafe Gallery, but the festival is her natural milieu.
"What's happening is that I'm accumulating too much at home," Turner said. "This is the only venue I ever display my work at."
The charcoal drawing is one of the items she produced while watching television, which doesn't totally engage her attention, which takes us back to the ADD bit again.
"It's something I really like to do, but you'll notice most of my work isn't similar," Turner said.
"It's all different. It's hard for people to say 'that's one of yours.'"
She's won the People's Choice Award at a past Great Northern Arts Festival and Most Promising New Artist at another, but she "couldn't tell you what year."
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