Ed Isaacs presents
L O C K D O W N| & OTHER NEW WORKS
Ed Isaacs, 69, describes himself as an "enthusiastic urban sketcher" on the streets of towns and cities, but the coronavirus lockdown has forced him to look closer to home for inspiration. This exhibition presents an opportunity to view the work created in lockdown including his self isolating series and other new creations. It will be our first community opening since lockdown and we at Asylum are very proud to host this opportunity to view a local artists response to a unprecedented time.
17-27 August 2020 | Open 10.00-12.00 & 14.00-16.00 every weekday.
People are very welcome to drop in or arrange a viewing by contacting the artist on |
Tel | 07977 517277
Email | isaacsed91@gmail.com
Ed Isaacs, 69, describes himself as an "enthusiastic urban sketcher" on the streets of towns and cities, but the coronavirus lockdown has forced him to look closer to home for inspiration.
This exhibition presents an opportunity to view the work created in lockdown including his self isolating series and other new creations.
| Artist statement |
Ed’s work is very much focused on place; in particular the area where he lives and works Wolverhampton, Birmingham and the Black Country. He is an urban sketcher, creating many of his works out of doors and through direct observation. He also produces large-scale drawings in his studio and these are often records of journeys he makes or local scenes. Many of these drawings have a surreal edge – highly detailed and painstakingly rendered townscapes with which are given a dreamlike quality by introducing slightly incongruous elements.
This exhibition covers both these elements of Ed’s work. Half of the exhibition is devoted to ‘lockdown’ drawings that Ed created each day over the first 50 days of lockdown. When this started in March, Ed knew that he wasn’t going to be able to get out sketching or work from his studio. He decided, therefore, to concentrate on drawing what was directly around him in his house, garden and street and this would then become his permanent record of the pandemic.
He would also take the time to make highly accurate drawings, following the approach advocated by Sir William Coldstream, founder of the highly influential Euston Road School in the immediate post-war period. Ed wanted to use this time as an opportunity to develop his own drawing skills and also show that art can be created anywhere and about anything. By sharing his lockdown drawings across various social media platforms, Ed developed quite a following for his work. It also came to the attention of the local and national media and formed the inspiration for an exhibition of art created during lockdown curated by Wolverhampton Art Gallery.Each of these drawings took a few hours and a lot of concentration to produce and at the end of those 50 days, Ed was quite exhausted. He then moved on to creating other new work and this is the subject of the other half of the exhibition. Three of the four large-scale drawings on show have been created since mid-May. They are drawn using coloured pencils and feature scenes of Wolverhampton with cows. Ed likes to bring together images that include everyday scenes of the city and cows. The buildings or scenes have to say something about the city in 2020 and the cows are there because Ed likes cows and is great admirer of Golden Age Dutch artists such as Aelbert Cuyp, for whom no scene of Dordrecht would be complete without a cow in front of it. The cow also features widely in mythology and has importance for Celts, Hindus, Greeks and, of course, for all Europeans. The fourth large-scale drawing is the final one in Ed’s ‘Wolverhampton Ring Road’ series. Edexhibited these at the end of last year in Wolverhampton, but this one of the eagle was not completed at that time. This is Ed’s largest and most detailed ‘Ring Road’ work.