For the next two years, Turner was a lecturer at the Guildford School of Art; working on environmental installation projects with Australian artist Tony Underhill.
For five years, he was based at Chicago House in Luxor, Egypt; making facsimile drawings of the reliefs on the walls of the Temple of Khonsu, Karnak and Medenet Habu, adjacent to the Valley of the Queens.
He returned to Scotland in 1989, and ran an "art holiday" home business from Park House in Kirkcudbright, as well as lecturing part-time in various colleges and schools.
Richard Turner's work is mainly figurative painting, including some nudity, within Arcadian landscape settings similar to the compositions in renaissance and mannerist art.
His change from hard edge abstraction to synthetic renaissance is evident in his 5×7 ft. painting, The Resurrection of Tutankhamen, leading to his work being labelled post modernist.