Ed Saye
“I make landscapes out of what I feel.” Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
My paintings are full of middle-aged men like me, avatars sort of, playing golf, watering lawns, smoking, floating, lying down. They're sometimes pensive, sometimes radiant, sometimes both. There’s not much happening, except maybe the low-key drama of just being. The figures move through surreal, almost psychedelic landscapes at dusk, rendered in saturated colours and acid greens, with the faint apocalyptic hum of too much light on a summer evening. It's as if a Renaissance altarpiece got lost inside a retro video game.
There’s meant to be lightness here, but also dread. The men in my paintings seem adrift, gently performing their leisure. Golf clubs become wands or weapons, depending on the angle. Lawns stretch out like strange stages. It's masculinity, maybe, but in a costume - performative, nostalgic, unsure. These worlds aren’t utopias, but they’re not exactly dystopias either. They’re invented landscapes of feeling. As Fernando Pessoa put it, “I make landscapes out of what I feel,” and that feels right. I’m painting fantasy in order to understand reality.
My process is hybrid: I use oil paint, yes, but also digital drawing and image-making tools in the initial stages. I grew up alongside the birth of computer games but also exposed to painting and art. I loved the latter more than the former. Now I watch my children playing computer games; these are the tools and images around me, and I want to see what happens when old and new mediums merge to create a new language. The result, I hope, is a kind of digital-physical fiction. Something that’s not quite real but is trying to feel its way toward truth.
At heart, I think I’m painting in defence of the everyday. And in defence of painting itself—a medium slow enough to hold conflicting things together: melancholy and joy, banality and wonder, digital noise and painterly touch.
Lives and works in London
2007-2009 Slade School of Fine Art, London, MFA Painting
2005-2007 Central Saint Martins, London, Foundation Diploma
1996-2000 Durham University, BA Hons Modern Languages
Exhibitions
2025 Once Emerged From the Grey of Night, Chapel Arts Studios, Andover, UK
2025 Traces, Chapel Arts Studios, Andover, UK
2024 Belonging, Chapel Arts Studios, Andover, UK
2023 to the birds, curated by Dan Howard-Birt, Exeter Phoenix, UK
2023 A Generous Space 3, Huddersfield Art Gallery, UK
2023 Works on Paper 5, Blue Shop Gallery, London
2023 CAS Open_Open, Chapel Arts Studios, Andover
2021 your FOOT in my FACE, Kingsgate Project Space, London
2018 Beep Painting Prize 2018, Elysium Gallery, Swansea
2018 The SOLO Award, Chiara Williams Contemporary Art, The Cello Factory, London
2018 Beautiful Monsters, The Portico Library, Manchester
2018 Reconstructing Reality, 20:20 Iconic Art Vision at D10 Art Space, Geneva
2018 The Landscape of Time, Contemporary British Painting, St Marylebone Crypt, London
2017 Virtuality Mortality, XAP at Ugly Duck, London
2017 The Ruth Borchard Portrait Prize, Piano Nobile Gallery, London
2016 No Promised Land, The Foundry Gallery, London
2016 The Runaway Fingers, Pushkin House, London
2016 Daylight Saving, Geddes Gallery, London
2013 Isolation Room, curated by Daniel McGrath, Copenhagen
2013 This Glitch, curated by Lee marshall, Blythe Gallery, London
2013 Creekside Open selected by Paul Noble, A.P.T. Gallery, London
2013 The Big Egg Hunt for Action for Children, London and UK touring
2012 The Other Art Fair, Ambika P3, London
2010 Grammar See, Rod Barton Gallery, London
2009 Lead Slugs and Blank Spaces, Museum 52, London
Graduate Degree Show, Slade School of Fine Art, London
Anger Management, Will Alsop Space, Battersea, London
2008 Interim Show, Slade School of Fine Art, London
Edge to Edge, Slade Research Centre, Woburn Square, London
Residencies
2008 Poznan Academy of Fine Arts, Skoki, Poland
Publications
2011 Studio Paintings, 2011, Self-published, UK
2010 Furniture Drawings, 2010, Self-published, UK
2009 Sheraton Sofa, 2009, Self-published, UK
Slade Painting 2008, Slade Publication, UK
2008 Look Book, 2008, Self-published, UK
Edge to Edge, 2008, Slade Publication, UK
Rhubarb, 2008, Slade Publication, UK
Paint to Print, 2008, Slade Publication, UK
2007 20 Hoxton Square Newspaper, 2007, UK
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