“I quite like paint and brushes, but no more than writers like their pens. For me, art is about carrying ideas from a storehouse of recollections and emotions onto canvas. I want to take my viewers down the dimly lit passages of my life, and through my figures and interiors to explore what it is to be a human being.

I use a multitude of methods, skills and processes to reproduce the objects around me, so that they can carry an emotional charge from my life and into the lives of others. I’m completely fascinated by our mortality, vulnerability and courage, smiling up out of love, loss, longing and regret, sweetly into the eyes of those who at first believed that it was only a painting. 

I use everything at my disposal to make paintings – everything! My designs gestate through months of writing and finally evolve in a series of drawings until they’re satisfactory. Several models are tried and furniture is refinished for every painting, and then the working drawing is built and rebuilt against Pythagoras’s lines and points, and ultimately transferred to canvas.

I layer solid paint and oil glazes, darkening, lightening and recolouring; adjusting and rethinking until I am as sure as I can be, that I have made something authentic. An object with integrity. That is what I want the world to have…not a product or mere merchandise, but a small piece of my heart.”

EXPERTISE

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Emerging Artists

About The Artist

Edward Povey grew up in foggy South London, England, began drawing obsessively when he was seven and never stopped. He trained at Eastbourne College for Art and Design and the University of Wales, and studied with professional artists and art dealers in Brussels, Paris and New York although to this day he regards his paintings as a means of constant learning and exploration.

He began his professional career in Israel, Wales and England, painting 25 interior and exterior murals up to six storeys in height on commission from Universities, lawcourts, hospitals, commercial stores and private individuals. Subsequently he worked in his painting studios in Britain, the USA and Grenada in the Caribbean. 

His early career commissions imbued Edward with a range of skills, and a fascination with the conception, writing, design, research and process of making art, as well as the nuts and bolts business of art careers. Povey’s career goal has always been twofold: to support himself comfortably and exclusively on his art, and only to make art that he can truly believe in.

He has exhibited with galleries in London, New York, Holland, Belgium, Paris, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and has also spent 20 years giving intimate lectures about his work to audiences of private collectors in five countries. His paintings hang in private, major corporate and museum collections in 24 countries.

Since his youth Edward addressed audiences, first as the lead singer in a rock band and then as a life coach in schools, theatres, prisons and conferences. Inevitably his art career combined to make him an intuitive and knowledgeable mentor of artists, speaking in auditoriums filled with painters, practical workshops, and in one-on-one coaching with beginners through to professional artists. 

Edward Povey’s art was taught on the school curriculum in Wales; several authors have included chapters in their books about his paintings; the Museum of Modern Art in Wales collaborated on a book about his life and work; the British Library of London recently documented Povey’s career for the nation; two artworld film companies in London are building articles and videos about his life-story as an artist; in the last year he has accepted commissions from Sweden, Uruguay, Wales and the United States; and the Russian government invited him to speak at an art fair in Moscow. He cherishes his friendships with many established late career artists, with whom he debates art, technique and philosophy.

Edward spends sixty hours a week, in his painting studio year round. He regards his paintings as riddles to be solved, and whilst they leave for the walls of galleries, museums and collectors, he still sees them as personal and living things, growing out of his memories and experiences.

Povey and his dear wife, the artist Tolar Schultz, live deep in the countryside of North Devon in England, in a labyrinth of carnival masks, oriental furniture, stained glass and theatre lighting.

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