Headshot credit – Folasade Ologundudu
Ep.66 features Khari Turner, an emerging painter from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and a current MFA graduate student at Columbia University. He is in multiple collections including his alma mater Austin Peay State University, where he received his BFA. He has been featured in Artnews, Whitehot magazine, Hyperallergic, to name a few. He grew up with many works of art from black artists that his grandparents collected. His grandfather was also a draftsman which inspired Khari at an early age to create. Growing up in Milwaukee, he was exposed to a connection to vast nature and dense cityscapes fighting amongst a city well known for its continued segregation. This created a connection to Black people and their environment over time. Blackness and Black people are the ocean to Khari. He currently takes water directly from the Ocean and his hometown, Lake Michigan, and the Milwaukee River, incorporating them in the work either mixing the water with paint or pouring directly on the surface of the work. His aims are to eventually start a non-profit to create art programs directed at improving neighborhoods like the one he grew up in.
Khari Turner has a solo show opening May 21, 2021, at Voss Gallery in San Francisco and a solo show opening July 10th at the Ross Sutton Gallery in NYC.
Artist website ~ www.khariturner.com
Artnews~ www.artnews.com/art-news/artists/khari-turner-artist-artnews-live-interview-1234577381/
Columbia University ~ https://arts.columbia.edu/news/khari-turner-21-what-are-you-thinking-about-now
Whitehot Magazine ~ https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/turner-or-joy-in-struggle/4797
Kourosh Mahboubian Fine Art ~ https://mahboubianfineart.com/forget-what-you-know-khari-turner
