works

EDMOND PRAYBE

Edmond Praybe received his BFA from Maryland Institute, College of Art and MFA from the New York Studio School. His work has been shown in venues across the U.S. including Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, OH, Stephen F. Austin State University in TX, The University of Mary Washington in VA, Prince Street and Bowery Galleries in New York City and The Mitchell Gallery at St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD. Notable art critics Jed Pearl and David Cohen have included Praybe’s work in juried exhibitions. He has been the recipient of the Hohenberg Travel Grant and the artist-in-residence at Catoctin Mountain Park.

My recent works, comprised mostly of still-life and interior paintings, investigate the visual intricacies of cluttered spaces and complex groupings of objects and attempt to find unity within the disarray. The balance between openness and inevitability within the image is the defining current that runs through these works. The spaces, objects and figures manifest throughout different paintings, seen from new angles and combined in ever evolving staging’s. As the paintings morph and develop so too do the actual set-ups; objects and figures are moved around, some added some taken out and different viewpoints are employed. All of these fluctuations, the process of looking, reacting and revising, serve to keep the paintings from closing in on themselves before a unified expression is brought to resolution.

 In these works objects are recast in multiple paintings, serving to establish a visual vocabulary and sense of history. I have a personal connection to many of the objects while some are chosen purely for their aesthetic appeal. Some objects were gifts, some inherited, some found in thrift stores, yard sales, in the woods or abandoned houses, all chosen for their qualities of visual interest: color, shape, texture, narrative implications and evocations. Flowers, figures, glassware, mugs, tv tables, bones, beehives, furniture, insects, easels, paintings, plates, bowls, fruit, bird nests, sea shells, pitchers, vases, plants, turtle shells, patterned fabric, frames and laptop computers bring together elements of the natural world and the manufactured man-made world existing in some kind of designed equilibrium. My curiosity about nature, collecting remnants of plants, trees, bones and other found objects from walks in the woods, combines with my day to day suburban existence in these paintings. The mix of found, collected and bought objects unite visually as the tactility of the observed forms translates into the tactile quality of the paint ultimately relaying the feeling of an integrated world. I am focusing in on the quiet act of contemplation that occurs during the process of observing then synthesizing and recording the visually perceived world into paint.

Edmond lives and paints just outside of Annapolis, Maryland with his wife and two cats.