Annie Luke Turner

Annie is a full time artist living in Kendal, Cumbria and Hull, East Yorkshire.

Inspired by the landscape: mountains, streets, ports, buildings, rivers, roads, the land, the light, the seasons, Annie spends time in places, walking, looking, feeling the atmosphere, sometimes drawing or making marks, sometimes looking further and researching the history and the stories of those places. But she also works from her own experiences and emotions, letting in everyday life into her work: the big things and small things we all experience: the departures and arrivals of people you love, the political climate, journeys, time, music, other artists’ work…

“When I start painting, I try to switch off any connection to meaning. If I’m thinking about what I’m doing then I’m not doing it – I’m thinking it and it becomes boring and predictable. I connect to the feeling of a place and then I just start making marks, it becomes a conversation between myself and the painting. Sometimes we end up shouting at each other, other times its softer and calmer – its a bit of a rollercoaster.”

Over the days and weeks spent on each painting, the marks become layered or obliterated and each mark or layer affects the next – in the same way that time and the seasons change a landscape or that experiences and memory can change the past. For Annie the process is a search for some sort of instinctive balance or harmony. Being in control whilst letting go at the same time. Eventually Annie or the painting says stop.

“It’s like the painting has become the thing it should be, and I’m always amazed to see it. I’m really attached to them by that time, but one of greatest things is when I see someone fall in love with one of my paintings. Whether they buy it or not, it’s just great to know that something I’ve made – something which goes beyond words – can make a connection with another person. It’s such a lovely feeling to know that the work is communicating.”

Annie is the 2025 recipient of the Women in Art Prize for Abstract Painting.