Today, he is the world’s leading artist in his field and he has created permanent installations in twenty-six countries. Turrell is a trained psychologist and also studied mathematics, geology, and astronomy. A common feature of his works is to envelop the audience in light and colour controlled by the artist.

James Turrell’s best-known work is Roden Crater – the world’s biggest work of art in an extinct volcano in the Arizona desert. He acquired the crater – four hundred thousand years old and three kilometres wide – in 1979 and since then, it has become a life-long art project. He is building an enormous observatory facilitating the study of the sky’s light qualities over a twenty-four-hour period. Turrell is also known for his Sky Spaces, the first of which was created in 1975. Turrell’s often colourful spatial installations resemble three-dimensional light paintings where he, like a modern-day Michelangelo, connects the earthly with the celestial and body and sentiment with mind and thought.