Paul Edwards

My paintings are of objects, often clothing, some found but all used – e.g. a shoe from the red light district of Amsterdam. Objects are not neutral: a shoe is shaped, becomes worn by a person’s gait, it takes on the shape of the foot that wears it. I have painted shot glasses, a wine glass, seductive Chinese cigarette packets and cakes with a synthetic pink frosting – a kind of visual ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’ – contemporary life, a place where everything is available.
I am a painter working out of my studio in Cardiff, Wales. I make work directly from the subject. As well as working in the U.K I regularly work abroad. I spent three months painting on the West coast of Ireland in County Mayo at the Ballinglen Foundation but recently my focus has shifted to the U.S. I have painted in Vermont and for several years as a resident at the Virginia Centre for the Creative Arts.
My painting is figurative and underpinned by drawing – I am interested in making work about seeing. Recently I have become interested in curating and participating in collaborations with writers. I curate ‘Imagistic’ a series of ongoing international collaborations between artists and writers. Our events have taken place in venues in the U.K and also in the States, in Minneapolis and Washington D.C.
I have work in private collections in Britain, Germany and the U.S. My work is also represented in public collections; in the Kunsthalle Mannheim, University of Lincoln and Bishop Grosseteste University and at the Glyn Vivian Gallery in Swansea, South Wales.