8 Weeks in Serifos

About

Edward Kelly’s powerfully expressive paintings composed of rhythmic marks and emblems reflect his long standing engagement with the relationship between the elemental force of nature and the dynamic of abstract painting. The excitement of dramatic environments is alive in Kelly’s works, and this is fuelled by his passion for mountain walking.  This Solo Exhibition will feature his latest excursion to the Greek island of Serifos.

Intense, complex paintings disclose an insightful assimilation of Modernism, but Kelly’s long held admiration for Piero della Francesca, for whom mathematics was so important, is revealing. For Kelly the balance, or deliberate imbalance, of shape, is crucial. Spatial concerns alternate constantly between those of the subject and those of the painting, but for Kelly ‘The ordering of these very concrete issues is never secondary to figuration’.

The abstract freedom he achieves is in itself enough to result in highly engaging works, but there is always another dimension present where ‘the narrative is found in mid-course’ and the extent of these connections make the paintings startlingly profound. Sub meanings seem to occur sometime during the painting, trajectories to what we think is being communicated. So often humour, or the act of play with painterly elements, seems to spill through, only to be checked by a darker or more complicated set of thoughts.