When his father lost his job as a shipyard engineer during the Great Depression,[2] a 15-year-old Turnbull was forced to leave school and find part-time work, first as a labourer and then painting film posters.

He began attending an evening drawing class at Dundee University where he was taught by landscape artist James McIntosh Patrick and illustrator Fred Mould.

At the time The Slade championed a nostalgic and naturalistic neo-romanticism and was suspicious of the European Impressionist and post-Impressionist that Turnbull had come to regard as valid and direct.

It was in the sculpture department that he met Eduardo Paolozzi and Nigel Henderson, who shared his interest in contemporary Continental modernist art.

Times were hard and he was forced to take a part-time job working the night shift at a Lyons ice cream factory.

When Turnbull travelled to New York in 1957, Blinken introduced him to a number of the leading American artists such as Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman with whom he established a close relationship.

In 2012 Alex Turnbull co-directed Beyond Time, a documentary film about his father, scored by 23 Skidoo and narrated by Jude Law.