Lois Turner graduated from the University of South Australia with a Bachelor of Visual Arts Degree majoring in painting in 1990.
For the following year she was an artist in residence in the sculpture department within the university. During that year she focused on work that ensued from a brief visit to an aboriginal settlement in Alice Springs. This trip was the outcome of Lois receiving the 1990 Soroptimist’s International Travel Award.
For the five years after graduation, Lois was actively involved in painting from her own studio and participated in variousexhibitions around Adelaide. Then it was time for a new direction.
The importance of having a new direction emanated out of Lois’ dissatisfaction with what she had previously been trying to communicate to the art audience. As a student it became very clear to her that the role of the artist is to embrace and to engage society. Lois thought this was one of the issues that evolved out of the experience of witnessing “what it must be like” to be an indigenous Australian in central Australia in the mid 1990s.
Following this profound experience she needed time to focus on the “what it is that I have to communicate” in a more philosophical way as she fervently believed she had be true to herself and to her artwork. What was needed was a philosophical approach to life itself before any progress could be made.
Philosophy had always been of interest to Lois and for the ensuing years she returned to academic study at the University of Adelaide, majoring in philosophy. This entailed an analytical approach to philosophy and covered a wide range of subjects from areas in cognitive science to the Philosophy of Beauty. The latter ultimately set her running on a collision course once again with the visual arts, but with a new vision.
For Lois, “art wasn’t just about creating beautiful images, but the concepts of ‘beauty’ had to be redefined as well as widened if she was to attempt to address any kind of social issues”. For the following five years Lois studied the philosophy of Beauty and the Philosophy of Language which she found were returning her to her creative roots. But there was a hitch, a major health crisis was looming and was to defer her from completing her degree.
In February 2004 Lois was diagnosed with breast cancer. This clearly had a profound influence on the direction for her artwork from thereon in. It is now five years since her diagnosis and Lois feels she has the “what it is like” that she is trying to communicate in a very important social context: women’s health.
Since her diagnosis, Lois has competed in dragon boat racing internationally both in Penang and Vancouver with Adelaide Survivors Abreast, started writing a book, written poems and limericks and for now it is back to painting with a new vision.