Jesse Edwards - semper fi artist

After she bungled a question in the Miss Teen USA pageant, contestant Caitlin Upton become her own event horizon. No light penetrates past her media coverage. Jesse Edwards' painted her pixelated to the edge of her form. His version of Pointillism is a critique on fame that lights up the Web, like fireworks in a night sky, except it trails after its subjects forever. Even if Upton becomes a Rhodes Scholar, her misadventure in front of a microphone will be there whenever anyone clicks on her name.

Detail:

Pageant (oil on linen 40 x 36 inches) was part of Edwards' show at Flatcolor Gallery last month. I saw it on the last day and didn't intend to write about it, but it stayed with me.

The rap against Edwards in Seattle is that he's all over the map. It's true. Then there's the fact of him. Below, the opening of a profile I wrote in 2006:

Jesse Edwards lives in a downtown studio that is packed with his paintings. They lean in stacks and protrude in piles. His bed is a sack on the floor, which is littered with fast food packaging, art books and objects he uses for his still lifes, including a skull, a skateboard, pop cans, bongs, porn magazines, shredded dolls, a toy cop car and the odd piece of fruit.

He has a computer covered in graffiti on a wrecked table beside half an office chair, foam spilling out, that he found on the street. Creature comforts are not his thing. "I'm an artist," he said. "I want to paint in oils like the old masters."

An aspiration to old master painting is not the first thing that comes to mind on meeting him. He looks like a thug. At 29, he's tall and lean with thick muscles running up his tattooed arms and down his torso. His smile doesn't often reach his eyes, which bore into people.

"I'm an ex-thug," he said. "In the old day, I'd stomp people who disrespected my tags."

Stomp?

"Put them down so they don't get up. I was a kid. I didn't know any better."

His landscapes look as if they're sweating - open stretches of summer fields working hard for the money.

Landscape oil on linen 60" x 40"

Some of his ceramics are tributes to his adventures as a graffiti writer. (Image via)

The art world breaks artists' hearts. First to break are those who ring wrong bells when they walk into a gallery. Edwards can't change that, anymore than Caitlin Upton can, but she could learn a lot from him. He's stout-hearted and keeps on keeping on.

White Fear, oil on linen, 38 x 28 inches

February 3, 2010 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) |

6 Comments

By DIsco Bryso on February 5, 2010 8:19 PM

Jesse will make it out of Seattle.. he's part of the reason I am inspired everyday to keep chugging along on opening my own gallery in NYC and on some of my other projects as well. check out our blog for a look inside his studio. We will have his original and print work available once our site launches and hopefully do a large solo exhibition some time in July... Jesse is a unique and talented individual and will do very well in the NY market... patience art fiends, patience.

By Daniel Kany on February 5, 2010 9:05 AM

Jesse Edwards doesn't need to get away from anything. The guy is tough, talented and enjoys being genuinely rough around the edges - it's no act.

MaxW is right on. Kudos to Regina for writing about Edwards. And she's not kidding about ringing the wrong bells. I was the director of a gallery into which Edwards walked with a sheet of slides of his bang paintings: He looked at the work on the walls (by none less than Christopher Brown) and said he could paint "circles around this circus" and handed me his sheet of slides. Edwards can really paint.

But FrankO - I do suggest you avoid telling Jesse to his face that he needs to get out of town. He doesn't need a reason to go. And that wouldn't end well for you.

Edwards is definitely one of the most interesting artists in Seattle.

By harold hollingsworth on February 5, 2010 3:59 AM

fight, fight, fight!

By Laura on February 5, 2010 2:04 AM

I don't live in Seattle and as far as I can tell, Jesse Edwards' work is not available beyond it. Online he looks terrific. The writer who's saying how narrow-minded Seattle is can consider the same to be true about the world itself. Unless Jesse Edwards isn't trying to connect or even rejects opportunities, he doesn't appear to be finding doors opening elsewhere. Which is a shame. If he has a show in San Francisco, I'll be sure to attend.

By MaxW on February 4, 2010 11:16 PM

Frank. You know nothing about Seattle. P.S. It might interest you to realize that you read about Mr. Edwards on Regina's blog. Who is Regina? Seattle.

By FrankO on February 4, 2010 1:26 PM

Jesse Edwards needs to get away from Seattle. Sounds like the art people in Seattle are too narrow-minded to accept that an artist can have a range of expressions and be somebody other than middle-class. No MFA? No shoes, no service.

Another Bouncing Ball

This blog continues Art To Go, which I wrote as the art critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, beginning at the end of 2007 and continuing through March 15, 2009. ABB is an exploration of art in Seattle that extends outward, both geographically and by topic, touching on art, politics, literature, dance and whatever it is that the cat drags in. Its title comes from a poem by Delmore Schwartz, The Ballad of the Children of the Czar, specifically, "The ground on which the ball bounces/ Is another bouncing ball."

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Regina Hackett ... is the former art critic for the former Seattle P-I. I loved that job every day, but it's gone and I've moved on. As they say in the movies, to infinity and beyond.
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Contact me Click here to send me an email, or email me directly at anotherbb(at)gmail.com. My mailing address is 300 Queen Anne Ave. N. Seattle, WA 98109
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Jesse Edwards - semper fi artist

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