J.M.W. Turner, the famous English painter (1775-1851), has always fascinated me. His ability to capture light, atmosphere, and movement is unparalleled - his paintings don't just depict a scene; they make you feel it. As an artist, I find myself drawn to those fleeting moments in nature that Turner so often explored: fog rolling in over the water, the sun barely breaking through the mist, the way air and light seem to merge into one.
A few mornings ago, I experienced a Turner moment firsthand. It wasn't planned, but that's the beauty of nature - it hands you inspiration when you least expect it.
A Turner Morning on the Water
I woke up early, as usual, made coffee, and stepped outside to check the weather. What greeted me was pure Turner—thick fog, soft drizzle, and a quiet stillness that made the world feel smaller, more intimate. I debated whether to go out on my paddleboard, but something about the mist called to me. Turner would have painted this.
J.M.W. Turner’s The Thames above Waterloo Bridge immediately came to mind. The way he used light in that painting—the hazy forms, the indistinct horizon, the movement of air—perfectly captured the kind of morning unfolding before me.
I decided to paddle out to Jupiter Island, knowing the visibility would be low but feeling drawn to experience the morning as Turner might have seen it—an interplay of light, shadow, and motion.
Fog and the Unknown
Launching from the dock was trickier than usual. The tide was low, and the world around me had dissolved into shades of gray. As I paddled, the fog thickened. A red channel marker barely emerged through the mist, standing as the only defined element in the vast openness of the Intracoastal.
Somewhere nearby, I heard the distant hum of a research boat. It reminded me of Turner’s maritime paintings, where ships fade into the mist, half-real, half-imagined. I stayed close to the shallows, able to see the sandy bottom through just a foot of water.
As Jupiter Island came into view—if you could call it that—the silhouettes of Australian pines and mangroves began to take shape. I paddled toward a small sandy cove where a great white egret stood motionless, surrounded by roseate spoonbills and a great blue heron feeding in the shallows. I pulled out my iPhone and snapped a few photos, knowing they wouldn’t do the moment justice.
A Scene Turner Would Have Painted
After pulling my board onto shore, I walked the boardwalk through the mangroves toward the beach. This is a familiar route for me, one that I’ve painted many times. But today, it felt different. Halfway across, I stopped at a creek—its surface perfectly still except for one small ripple.
A river otter.
It swam against the current, sleek and swift, before it noticed me. In a flash, it disappeared beneath the water, leaving behind only a few lingering ripples. It was the kind of moment Turner would have captured in just a few expressive brushstrokes—an impression, a suggestion of movement rather than a defined subject.
As I continued toward the beach, the fog made even the most familiar landscapes feel new. The native palms, usually backlit by the rising sun, stood as dark silhouettes against the mist.
The Turner Moment
Then it happened—the real Turner moment.
Standing on the empty beach, I watched as the sun began breaking through the fog. At first, just a faint glow. Then, slowly, the light diffused across the sky, pushing through layers of mist. It wasn’t a bright sunrise. It wasn’t dramatic. It was subtle, fleeting—just like The Thames above Waterloo Bridge.
JMW Turner had a way of painting these moments, of making them feel alive. His work was never about rigid realism—it was about movement, light, and the feeling of a place. This morning on the beach, I felt like I had stepped inside one of his paintings.
From the Water to the Canvas
Back in the studio, I couldn’t shake the feeling of that morning. The way the fog softened everything. The quiet movement of the otter. The muted glow of the sun breaking through.
So I painted it.
Lifting Fog came directly from that experience—an oil painting capturing that soft, atmospheric light, the way the water and sky blurred together. Turner’s influence is there, not in subject matter but in feeling. It’s a reminder of what he knew so well: that light is always shifting, that landscapes are never still, that the most powerful moments are often the quietest.
What J.M.W. Turner Teaches Us About Seeing
Turner’s work has a way of staying with you. His paintings are less about what’s in front of you and more about how you experience it. That’s what this morning reminded me of—how fog doesn’t just obscure but transforms, how light reveals itself in layers, how movement and stillness exist at the same time.
I didn’t set out that morning expecting to be inspired by Turner, but that’s how the best moments happen. You don’t always go looking for them. You just have to be willing to step into the fog and see what appears.
Be well, be loved.
~ Geoffrey
CITATION
Wikipedia, Learn more about JMW Turner here
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