EXHIBITION OVERVIEW
Esther Edwardes is an emerging contemporary artist from London, here introduced in her first solo exhibition. Since moving to Montparnasse in 2021, Edwardes attended the illustrious and revolutionary Académie de la Grande Chaumière, joining alumni such as Joan Miró and Louise Bourgeois. There Edwardes has worked under the tutelage of portrait artist Bertrand Desmaricaux and sculptor Arestakes Nevcheherlian. Over the year, her work transitioned from abstraction to figuration, first inspired by an increasing intimacy with the work of Auguste Rodin, a shift captured in this exhibition.
In early 2021, Edwardes produced a series of painted colour landscapes to evoke the feeling a space produces. Edwardes was inspired by the colour grids of Stanley Whitney and the colour relationships in the landscapes of Olga Davenport. Edwardes’ colour landscapes focus on colour without a rigid grid or depictive form. The landscapes flow to represent the changeable nature of a natural or urban environment. Thick textured paint gives depth and shifting light whilst lines vary from harsh to soft, creating fluidity throughout the piece. The painted colour landscapes shown in this exhibition are ‘Paris Skyscape II’ and ‘Autumn Lakes II’.
Simultaneously Edwardes began an in-depth study of the work of Auguste Rodin, aided by her proximity to the Musée Rodin. Edwardes produced sculpture studies initially with charcoal and then with acrylic using two-tonal colour motifs. While studying at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, she explored working from life and was captivated by the transition of life onto paper. Resulting from these influences, her new series features surreal figures developed from her own sculpture and worked in a mix of media of acrylic, charcoal, soft pastel and oil. Finally, having been influenced by the RA Francis Bacon: Man and Beast, Edwardes introduced more structural elements in her work and embraced oil as her primary medium.
Edwardes aims through this work to study the transition of a subject through different forms from imagination to sculpture and finally to painted/canvassed form. The ‘pinched’ forms originate from recurring dreams of her childhood featuring figures with long, pinched bodies often accompanied by repetitive, single-tone notes. Though Edwardes is unsure as to the origin of these dreams, they may have stemmed from a visit to La Fondation Maeght:
‘I must have been very young when we visited La Fondation Maeght but I still have a vivid impression of the towering fir trees and the heat of the summer sun. Most of all, I remember the Giacometti sculptures, elongated, rough and powerful, striding across, and yet somehow also growing out of, the terracotta courtyard.’
Whilst only dreamt of as 2D figures as if flattened on a wall, Edwardes creates small sculptures putting into shape their ‘pinched’ forms. She also took inspiration elsewhere such as a murmuration of starlings and Anna Halprin in ‘The Prophetess’. The fleshy sculptures themselves are hand sculpted from a modelling polymer that allows manipulation over a period of months without drying or cracking. Movement and power is twisted into the work, creating a conscious presence, giving life to the otherwise static form. Finally, a canvassed piece is created, placing the surreal figure in frame, counterbalancing the depth and movement of the sculpted piece with the flat plane of the background, only held in place by the suggestion of shadow.
‘This exhibition is all about transitions – sometimes we undergo radical and intrinsic change, either in thought, feeling or situation whether intentionally or not. In art we are always mirroring those transitions, whether it’s from life to paper, movement to sculpture or a feeling into painted form. What fascinates me is how between mediums and forms, different aspects of movement or feeling are highlighted, breathing life into the work.’
Esther Edwardes
