John Edwards was born in London in 1938. He studied at Hornsey College of Art, moved on to Leeds University’s Institute of Education and furthered his training at l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels in Brussels. He would feed his academic appetite by becoming a teacher of note in his native London, namely by serving as head of painting and sculpture at St Martin’s School of Art, London, in the 1980s. Students from the School of Visual Arts, in New York City, at Syracuse University, New York state, and at the Painting School of Montmiral, in Drôme, south-east France, also benefited from Edwards’ knowledge and experience.
As a painter, Edwards was sensitive to the free-form gestural abstract expressionism that made its way from America – chiefly New York – after WWII. Naturally, he was fully dedicated to the contemporary nature of his art and scene but he would favour an architectural structure to his composition, with geometric sections (the cross, for example, is a reoccurring motif) conferring volume to his painting. This is likely due to the artist’s talent as a sculptor. By embracing the fundamentals of his epoch, Edwards was able to better understand and later condense them in mastered and refined language of bold confident free-written colours that, in retrospect, evade a particular label.
This aesthetic independence is partly linked to Edwards’ spiritual kinship with India (specifically Jaipur), a country and culture that allowed him to overcome the pressure of London’s artistic life, especially when success and opportunities became scarce. In India, his approach, referents and palette evolved. With a new sensibility, the painter found renewed success, first in India, then internationally.
Throughout his career, Edwards could count on the Rowan Gallery to support and showcase his talent. From 1967 to 1981, the painter held nine solo shows in the London gallery. Internationally, he showed his art in Syracuse, Washington, San Francisco, Turin, Jaipur and New Delhi. Group exhibitions saw his art travel to Warsaw, Amsterdam, Madrid, New York, and Tokyo, among other cultural hubs.
