15-1963

In the catalogue to the Tate's 1973 exhibition, William Turnbull Sculpture and Paintings, Richard Morphet discussed the paintings of this period: ‘In the winter of 1962-1963 [Turnbull] visited Singapore for the first time. He was greatly struck by the vigour of the vegetation, of which he made many drawings. Especially striking was the view of the jungle from the air. This view of a thick uniform single-colour texture of abundant and luxuriant growth, broken only by a river’s winding course, was an important suggestion for the development of his painting ... Each painting was articulated internally, but any tendency to read the white gap between colour areas as line, or the colour areas themselves as shapes, was reduced to a minimum. The slender white gap read in fact like a fracture, and helped make the slender irregular negative area round the outer edges of the colour, part of the picture. Edge played a positive role without becoming an overpowering preoccupation. These paintings, made by applying layer after layer of very thin paint and rubbing with rags, have a soft, organic quality. It is instructive how sharply unlike the work of either Newman or Rothko they are, with their functional, integrated non-symbolic lines and luminous but matter-of-fact surface-located colour, despite their connections on a purely schematic level’ (R. Morphet, exhibition catalogue, William Turnbull Sculpture and Paintings, London, Tate Gallery, 1973, pp. 58-59).