Three Curiosities
Ed Valentine
June 19 - August 16, 2025
FEATURED ARTIST
ARTIST STATEMENT
Painting intrigues me. Curiosity keeps me going. Because of that curiosity and intrigue, I paint.
Once I begin a series, get all the pieces working together and there is a potency to the work, I continue until I feel the tickle to move on.
That tickle is my bellwether and always comes as a new curiosity. I will not/cannot for love, money, fame, or status stay after that point.
This may be the single reason why, after over fifty years of making paintings, intrigue and curiosity has not left me and I am still able to make paintings.
For this show, I have brought together three of those curiosities.
I build paintings through decades of study, practice and an understanding of drawing, color, composition, marks etc. and how, through our psychology, those elements are read and interpreted. In my work, a drip, a rip, a stain simply become compositional elements. They affect the composition as a conceptual element, rather than one that is strictly visual, thereby elevating it to a more complex place.
I don’t make stern or intimidating paintings, yet these are not soft or easy paintings. They are serious, smart, whimsical, and both visually and conceptually complex. They speak to a contemporary audience about what it is to be a painting while evoking a whisper about beauty and imperfection, brokenness, and resilience.
The older I get and the longer I paint, the less I want to say about my work. I understand that a few words have become necessary but those few should be enough. Asking for more limits its scope, sours the work and begins to feel closer to a confession being forced from you by the police.
I don’t try to make a point with my work and it means nothing. It just is! The French poet, Paul Valery wrote: “A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning.” I won’t allow my work to vanish into meaning. I’m a visual artist and as such my work leads to nonverbal places, places that will not slow to explanation.
So, a few brief words.
INNOCENTS PRESENTING BEAUTY TO THE BULLY THEORY
Sometimes a painting just wants to be a painting without all the theoretical baggage and pomposity.
STILL LIFE WITH…
With this work, as with traditional still life, we see the whole, then the parts. After that, and according to our individual psychology, we begin to make connections.
QUESTA NON UNA E FACCIA
These are the most recent in this group. Using the face simply as a format, they are a tongue in cheek nod to Magritte’s pipe.
Preview the Exhibition
(CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE)
