Portfolio Magazine
Featured Artist:
Edward Gordon

October 1996
Portsmouth, New Hampshire

Volume I, Issue 7
Photos and article by Mark Miller

"I was always an outlaw, said Edward Gordon, painter and Portsmouth resident, with a laugh. "Before I became a full time artist I had a CPA firm with my brother. I finally gave him one-year notice that I was leaving. He didn't believe me. A year later I moved to New Hampshire with my wife."

Edward started off working as a CPA in New Hampshire until, in 1980, he took an art class and sold one of the paintings from it. "I asked myself, 'What if I did this all the time? Could I make a living?' So, I sold my house before I was even finished building it and started to do sidewalk shows and look at galleries. I even developed a waiting list."

The transition from CPA to painter sounds abrupt, but the skill as a painter was always latent in Edward. "When I was a kid in school I would always hear, 'Eddy, will you draw this for me?' And my teachers always encouraged me. So, as you can see, the seeds were planted, but I had the 'prom queen' syndrome - I felt I needed to go out and get a real job."

It was an Andrew Wyeth exhibit that cured Edward's 'prom queen syndrome' and acted as a catalyst for his immersion into the world of art. "Somewhere around 1978 I went to see an Andrew Wyeth exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was blown away. I came out thinking, 'I want to do this.'

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"The first year I started to paint I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I started to copy the paintings of artists I admired. I still have a lot of these, unfinished, in my attic. I wold always ask myself what I did and didn't like about a piece of artwork. I even do this with my own work. I then concentrate immediately on the problem areas. It's as if I have little imaginary knobs for value and color that I am always turning until I get it right."

The results of Edward's efforts are incredible paintings that reach into three areas of art: Photo Realism, Renaissance, and Surrealism.

Photo Realism is a period in the 1970s when the worlds of photography and painting merged. Artists like Richard Estes, Ralph Goings and Chuck Close created technically perfect works of art that could be almost mistaken for photographs and, in many cases, were created from photographs. In the case of Edward Gordon, both of these things are true. He takes a series of photographs of an area he wishes to paint, then creates his paintings. The painting itself is an awesome example of detail and realism.

Now, you may be wondering where Surrealism fits into this perfect picture. Edward's subject is almost always an interior/exterior scene. We usually see part of a building, whether it is an interior, a porch or something similar, and, beyond that space, nature. Although the painting looks real - almost real enough to be a photograph - these spaces are manufactured by Edward. You may feel like you could go to the place in the painting - but you couldn't. It exists only in Edward's painting. In this subtle way they are Surreal.

Edward explains this sense of realism within his paintings. "Some science fiction seems real and makes you shiver. Some is too obviously fake and doesn't shake you. I want people to shiver."

I can't say that I have ever been frightened while looking at an Edward Gordon painting, but they have made me shiver. When I first saw his work from a distance I thought it must be a photograph, then inspected it closely and realized it was a painting, obviously done by an incredibly patient and talented painter. My second surprise occurred when I met Edward and learned that the places were not real.

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So, what about the Renaissance influences? 'I don't see any naked flying babies…' you whisper under your breath. Well, first off, anytime a subject is rendered realistically it can be tied back to the Renaissance. One of the most striking aspects of Edward's work is his sense of perspective. Perspective was discovered in the Renaissance. (People always look at me like I'm Cliff Clavin when I go into this, but it's true.) Yes, perspective was discovered - sort of.

The idea of perspective has been around since Ancient Greece, thought it really caught on around the 14th and 15th century when we started projecting images. This was the final tool we needed to study and understand perspective. It was also the very early beginnings of photography. During this time it gained great popularity and painters would show off their ability to render perspective. An Edward Gordon painting almost seems to be a masterful perspective study.

Edward Gordon offers us a consistency with his style that incorporates the three elements: Photo Realism, Surrealism, and Renaissance perspective; as well as with his consistent subject: the interior/exterior. He also impresses us as a master technician. But what does all of it mean?