Chris Edwick | The Work

Statement

Chris Edwick is a multimedia painter, who uses the pure childish pleasure of colour to celebrate the joy of being here, now. His watercolour paintings are influenced by Zen Calligraphy, using meditation to still and concentrate the mind in the present moment. Then as the painting begins, an intensely forceful rush of brushstroke and colour crashes through the silence with an anarchic freedom and spiritual force, creating rich, dynamic and highly sensual improvisations of wet colour melting into wet colour to represent what a moment in time can be and the rock and roll joy, celebration and appreciation of it.

Edwick also works with digital painting, using a computer to exploit all the possibilities offered by recent advances in technology. It allows him absolute precision of colour and line to compose an image that is perfect. The process is strategic and joyfully time consuming, in contrast to his watercolour pieces. In both however, the use of colour is at the heart of the work. For Edwick, colour must be gorgeous, shocking and sensual, engaging the viewer instantly. He is influenced by all those who are celebrative in their work from musicians and gardeners to choreographers and artists such as Jean Michel Basquiat, Patrick Heron and Gillian Ayres.