-
IN CONVERSATION WITH GARETH EDWARDS: LIGHT, ATMOSPHERE AND THE EDGE OF MEMORY
GARETH EDWARDS’ PRACTICE SITS BETWEEN LANDSCAPE AND ABSTRACTION, SHAPED BY LIGHT, ATMOSPHERE AND THE SLOW MOVEMENT OF MEMORY. WORKING FROM CORNWALL, HIS PAINTINGS RESPOND TO SHIFTING WEATHER SYSTEMS AND IMAGINED JOURNEYS, ALLOWING INTUITION AND MATERIAL PROCESS TO GUIDE EACH WORK. IN THIS CONVERSATION, EDWARDS REFLECTS ON HIS APPROACH TO PAINTING AND THE QUIET, CONTEMPLATIVE SPACE THESE WORKS INVITE. -
YOUR PRACTICE IS OFTEN DESCRIBED AS POETIC AND ATMOSPHERIC. WHERE DOES A NEW BODY OF WORK USUALLY BEGIN FOR YOU?The hope is to create a space made of light and atmosphere. A space that teeters on the edge of our memory, a chance for quiet yearning and for meditative pilgrimages. The two new larger pieces started with the idea of mountain scenes in ancient Chinese ink paintings that lodged in my mind and conflated with some contemporary music I’ve been listening to, coming from the mountains around Kyoto in Japan… travelling to and over the mountains in search of peace and harmony.YOUR PAINTINGS SIT BETWEEN LANDSCAPE AND ABSTRACTION. HOW DO YOU NAVIGATE THAT SPACE IN THE STUDIO, AND WHAT TENDS TO GUIDE YOUR DECISIONS AS A WORK DEVELOPS?I feel so free when I’m navigating the vestigial line between abstraction and landscape, I'm very much in late-period Turner's shoes with this, I feel. There is a freedom to embrace chance in the mark-making and to engage the viewer's desires to make sense of the hints and feints of paint factured and pulled and poured and pushed across the surfaces of these highly prepared surfaces. It's chance tricked into accuracy, as Seamus Heaney once wrote in a poem about a painter he knew in Ireland. I feel very comfortable working in the hinterland of not quite knowing, where every minute offers the possibility of atmospheres opening into clarity, like the misty rain of Cornwall clearing across the beach.LIVING AND WORKING IN CORNWALL, LIGHT AND WEATHER PLAY A CENTRAL ROLE IN YOUR PRACTICE. HOW DO THESE SHIFTING CONDITIONS SHAPE THE WAY YOU PAINT?The light and weather in Cornwall are always shapeshifting, eliding from mist and obscuration into piercing clarity and back again. The land and sea merge under an atmosphere of occluded fronts moving persistently in from the west over the wet Atlantic… it's almost never completely clear, unlike the east side of the UK, where I come from.
-
WITH THIS NEW SELECTION OF WORKS, WHAT FELT MOST IMPORTANT FOR YOU TO HOLD ONTO, OR PERHAPS TO LET GO OF, DURING THE PROCESS?
Letting go of experiential observations and working with landscape forms I’ve never been to… like the mountains in the Far East, although I have been to European mountains, these imaginative pilgrimages in the studio became an opportunity for free associations and non-cartographic mimetic verisimilitude.AS THESE WORKS ARE PRESENTED AT LONDON ART FAIR, WHAT DO YOU HOPE VIEWERS CARRY WITH THEM AFTER SPENDING TIME WITH THEM?
I hope that collectors gain an opportunity for a lifetime of personal, intimate, and poetic exchanges with their pieces… an ever-shifting opportunity for quiet moments of contemplation, wherein the painting becomes an instrument of poetic transport. -
WE’RE GRATEFUL TO GARETH FOR CONTRIBUTING TO THIS FEATURE. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR WOULD LIKE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HIS WORK, DON’T HESITATE TO GET IN TOUCH VIA THE LINK BELOW.
WOLFGANG BLOCH: ON INTUITION & PAINTING →
Join our mailing list
* denotes required fields
We will process the personal data you have supplied in accordance with our privacy policy (available on request). You can unsubscribe or change your preferences at any time by clicking the link in our emails.
Join our mailing list
* denotes required fields
We will process the personal data you have supplied in accordance with our privacy policy (available on request). You can unsubscribe or change your preferences at any time by clicking the link in our emails.