THE ARTIST
Charles R. Turnell
The camera taught me how to see.
Charles R. Turnell is a Belizean-American visual artist based in St. Louis, Missouri. His work brings photography and digital painting into conversation with the traditions of mosaic and pointillism.
Through Ars Musiva, he constructs images from fragments of his own photographs. A figure, feather, or landscape emerges from a distance; viewed closely, it opens into hundreds of small images, each retaining its own presence. The relationship between the fragment and the whole connects his explorations of memory, identity, nature, migration, and spirituality.
His way of seeing began in Belize. His mother was a visual artist; his father gave him his first camera. Collecting the family’s mail meant discovering each new issue of National Geographic, whose photographs opened a world of unfamiliar landscapes and cultures. A Jesuit education encouraged close attention to the meaning found in everyday life.
Years of living and traveling across the Americas and Europe expanded that photographic archive. Today, it provides both the subjects and the visual tesserae of his work.
Recent presentations include Prairie & Sky at Bruno David Gallery, the XV Florence Biennale, and the inaugural artist residency at Bellefontaine Cemetery & Arboretum. Across these projects, his guiding invitation remains the same: See Beauty Everywhere.