'Hero Painting'

Easily the greatest, the most convincing, the most miraculous painter this country has ever produced is Turner.

The evening star on Margate sands - well we think it's Margate sands - seems to me Turner at his finest. What is it? It is really a totally abstract 20/21st century painting.

The marks - if you blow them up with a magnifying glass - seem to be utterly irrational. Lots of palette knife marks scattered, almost seemingly at random, across the canvas, and yet in such a way that they conjure up Margate from the sea.

That we can make out, but with great, great difficulty, the shoreline - possibly the houses, possibly the cliffs, but really we are looking at a totally abstract and yet a totally actual painting.

 Back to 'Hero Painting'