Surreal Success - Buyer, connoisseurs paying top dollar for Edward Gordon's dreamlike paintings - Informative articles featuring or relating to the artwork of Edward Gordon

"The Ballroom" is Gordon's conception of a view from the Wentworth-by-the-Sea Hotel in New Castle. Discussing the work, Gordon calls "The Ballroom" the most difficult of his many paintings. Completed in November after nine months of work, the original sold in a matter of days.

Gordon speaks of the painting's difficulty with pride and looks of amazement.

"I couldn't tell you how long I spent on it," Gordon says from his gallery above Eagle Photo in Portsmouth's Market Square.

"I repainted the same painting three times. I never finished the first two."

Gordon began the process of painting "The Ballroom" in October 1996 after touring the aging, decrepit hotel, which sits dormantly on a bluff above the sea.

"It was a complete mess inside," Gordon says of the 20 years of neglect. "It was awful - all gray, dirt and spider webs."

Gordon searched the eerie structure until he discovered his subject - it's grand ballroom. Complete with eight windows, the room provided Gordon one of his foremost trademarks - a view to the sea. Once he found his subject, Gordon captured its soul through a photographic study that included nearly 100 snapshots. Focusing on the many angles of light and shadow about the room, Gordon later created "The Ballroom" in his fourth-floor studio above Market Street in Portsmouth.

In order to breathe life into the room, Gordon spent two hours washing it's windows. Despite his efforts, the windows maintained a slight layer of filth. The soiled hardwood floor, its luster long-since stripped away, left Gordon to create his own reflection of light in his painting.

Capturing the light with accuracy, considered one of the most difficult aspects of painting, is the constant source of Gordon's inspiration.

I really study the light - that's why it's not so difficult for me," he says. "You have to put detail with both the light and the shadow. There can't be a big difference between the two. I think it's more difficult to paint the shadows."

Layers provide an integral aspect to any Gordon painting. He relies on several layers of paint to create his soothing, inviting illusion of light and shadow. Invisible to the viewer, the layers are hidden with sanding and varnishing.

"I don't want to viewer to be conscious of them," Gordon says. "A good balance lets your eyes drift into it and become part of it."

For that reason, Gordon's paintings never include people. He says the absence helps the viewer feel welcome in the painting's empty space. Other characteristics of Gordon's paintings are often windows, doorways and stairways.

"They symbolize life's many choices," Gordon says with the backdrop of several of his paintings behind him.

To create his trademark paintings, Gordon relies on rare oil-based alkyd paints. He says alkyd is paint is bright like oils but dries overnight and provides the detailing of egg tempera.

Visions of surrealism have always been the hallmark of Gordon's paintings ever since he experienced an Andrew Wyeth exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1973.

"I just love the feeling of looking at his work," Gordon says. "It's that surreal, dreamlike feeling I try to do in my work."

Fifty-six years old with long, unkempt gray hair, Gordon looks little like the former accountant he was before his artistic inspiration. In 1973, Gordon moved to Franconia, where he spent seven more years as a CPA. After taking an art course in 1980, Gordon began painting full time.

He did five paintings as an amateur and sold three of them. One fetched $600.

"I thought, if I can sell these paintings as an amateur, I can make a living if I did it professionally," Gordon reminisces. "It took me quite a few years, but here I am."

Here is an interesting place for the artist whose work has twice won first place awards from Artists magazine. Gordon lives in Portsmouth and runs his Gordon Gallery with his business partner and companion Joa Ginsburg. Through the advances of computers and printing technology, Gordon and Ginsburg distribute high-quality giclee prints of his paintings to nearly 40 dealers around the country.

The Giclee prints have a higher apparent resolution than lithographs, formerly the most popular medium of prints. Through exact calculations of hue, value and density, more than three million colors are possible. The quality of Giclee prints helps Gordon sell nearly perfect reproductions of his original paintings. He sells the prints in limited editions with maximum quantities of 350. Each print is sequentially numbered and signed by the artist.

"Far more people want the originals now because of the prints," Gordon says. "The paper and ink combination used has been tested to last 24 years before showing any signs of fading. And when they show signs of fading, they'll look like an offset lithograph, which looks faded from the first day."

Although Gordon says his focus remains on artwork, his business acumen is impossible to hide. With an accountant's dryness, Gordon estimates his 1997 income exceeded $100,000. He modestly and reluctantly admits some of his original paintings have sold for more than $20,000 apiece.

"I really can't keep the price of my paintings a secret," he says, again sounding like an accountant. "What I sell my paintings for is what sells the next one."

His originals have been sold-out for the past three years.

Quickly moving past a discussion of finance, Gordon talks of the shortage of galleries in Portsmouth, given the high number of artists in the area. He hopes to use the Gordon Gallery to promote local artists.

With wit and good humor, Gordon pokes fun at the New Hampshire Art Association, operators of the Robert Lincoln Levy Gallery in Portsmouth. Laughing, Gordon tells of his submission of three samples ten years ago. His bid for membership was rejected. Ironically, Gordon promptly sold the same three paintings for more than $1,500. One, he says, recently resold for $2,400.

"I guess they wanted a better artist before they accepted me," Gordon laughs. "I don't know what they were looking for."

Walking around the Gordon Gallery, it's hard to imagine his work being discarded. Hanging just a few feet from "The Ballroom" is Gordon's most recent piece "Tuesday Afternoon." An astounding image of the Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion in Portsmouth, the painting is complete with Gordon's windows and a view to the sea.

Surrounded by prints, Gordon says his originals hang in private collections across the United States and Europe. He offers this with less enthusiasm than one might expect for such an impressive accomplishment.

"I'd love to keep all the originals," Gordon says of the difficulty of parting with his paintings. "It does bother me at times that I don't have a body of my own original works. But you have to decide whether you're going to be a professional artist or not."

Similar to his painting's remarkable balance of light and shadow, Gordon blends personas of artist and accountant. He speaks of the giclee printing process as a business opportunity. Ultimately though, Gordon is the artist first.

"With the prints it might be possible someday to keep some of the originals," he says. "But I paint them so I can touch people's lives in some way and if I kept them, I couldn't do that."