We recently connected with David Turner II and have shared our conversation below.

David, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

Learning the craft for me is ever-growing, and ever-changing, and has been for as long as I can remember. I started with crayons, as most children do. I would color in coloring books and draw houses with front yards full of flowers like the ones on TV. The pretty typical child that likes to color stuff. I distinctly remember my mom’s face when I showed her something I colored shortly after being given crayons for the first time, I was either three or four, her expression of shock was new and exciting. It made a core memory.

The first time I remember creating something that was not a direct copy of something I was physically seeing, was when I was four. I started drawing these heart creatures. They were always dancing with little stick legs and arms, and overly embellished eyelashes, wings, and lips. They were joy. I remember Care Bears being a big inspiration, it showed me an idea of what emotions could look like. I drew the silly hearts on everything, including using a ballpoint pen and carving them into my dad’s wooden drafting table. I felt pure joy when I tapped into that part of my brain and when I saw the shock and awe on people’s faces when I showed them something new, I created.

This was also the time I discovered paper could be a tool not just the medium, with paper airplanes at my preschool. I loved folding paper and watching it fly across the playroom, and learning about origami when I asked what else paper can be folded into. While folding never expanded beyond a few objects I have memorized, crafting with paper continued. I would cut, shape, and glue together paper flowers. I’ve dabbled with sculptures created from books and their pages as an adult.

After a few years in public school, there were a few compounding life-altering traumatic events that seemed to all happen at the same time. That lead to a lot of self-loathing and self-destructive behaviors. Nothing in my life was being spared. Not even my art. Especially after my parents found a drawing of a naked demon I had done. At the time, I was only 8, it was me drawing how I saw myself. They didn’t see it that way, with the majority of my family being strict Southern Baptist. I got in trouble, saw a bunch of doctors, and put on a bunch of pills that made me hate myself even more. And that was the start to decades of me destroying almost everything I would create from my soul. Because it was bad, and just like me, a gay man, of the devil.

It’s taken almost 30 years to move beyond that part of me enough to be at peace with creating art, and letting it be. While I have more recently stuck to using acrylic paint, I enjoy creating no matter the medium. Exploring ways to share something from me. Even when I hated what I created, I was still doing the most important thing an artist can do, I kept creating.

David, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

In the last six months, my career path had a sudden change. However, it provided an opportunity to focus more time on my art. More so than I could in the past. It was the deciding factor in going more public with my art and being more at peace with who I am and the things I create. While I’ve been creating my whole life, I’m in the beginning stages of art becoming my career.

My largest art series would be my Pokémon Slice of Life Acrylic Paintings. Pokémon became my main escape from dark times, specifically the core games and the cards. It was this idyllic world, where I didn’t have to be me. There were these amazing wild creatures, yet they had the capacity to become a friend. This series was started with the main goal of getting my art on a Pokémon card. With the 2024 Illustration Contest around the corner, a wild opportunity has appeared.

Landscapes Paintings, by default because of the composition of the Pokémon artwork I do, also fall toward the top. I’ve done a few pet portraits with vast beautiful backgrounds behind them. Even some portraits and scenes with people in dreamy natural settings. Creating a painting that invokes a sense of love and wonder. A place of fondness.

I’ve also started building up my more personal, emotionally charged artwork. These paintings explore moments I can’t forget or haunt me, like scars. Some explore what I imagine an emotion looking like if it was a creature, going back to my very start. These paintings tend to bust forth out of me like they need to escape, and tend to have a more surreal or abstract style.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My journey with art hasn’t changed much throughout my life. I created to spread joy and share my emotions in ways that words alone could not when I was a child, and that holds true to the present day. My love of Pokémon and the profound impact the little artwork on the cards had on providing an escape. I want to contribute to something that benefited me and helped me through some real dark moments in my life. That dream of getting my art on a card may be silly, but it has helped motivate me to keep creating, and to keep improving my skills in ways I never thought possible. It helped me see that it doesn’t matter what the goal is, as long as it’s the reason you keep improving and becoming better, the goal is exactly what you need.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

As my art has grown, developed, and become more expressive I have started to come across people who don’t understand or question why I would create a particular piece showing one of my personal moments of hell. To an extent, I can understand how that might seem counterintuitive. I’ve even been accused of glorifying my trauma, whatever that means. For me, it’s my story, I didn’t ask for it, but I have to live with it. When I create a piece that has some difficult themes to process, it’s a way of getting it out of my head, making it a place to live and be acknowledged for what it is in a more productive way than locking it up inside me to continue to fester.

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