Edward Huner, disparate images and spatial tensions


My creative search is to find a fulcrum among disparate images and spatial tensions. The narratives are typically incomplete as my metaphors are personal and often allusive. The mood may be self evident as are the elements, but innuendo attempts to stimulate the viewer into participation. I trust the viewer will bring their own life experiences to my metaphors and collaborate in a co-creation that expands, transforms and intensifies the visual experience beyond what I have provided. In effect, to supply what is not there. I wish each viewer to have a narrative interpretation that will be uniquely their own to possess.

My paintings are not visually observed occurrences. My figures are sourced from studio drawings and reference photographs. The models were not posed for a specific composition or narrative suggestion. A figure is intuitively matched to a specific but unrelated landscape or interior that evokes a metaphorical response from my memory or sense of place. It is a balance of tension between selection and truth – what it is and what it pretends to be. My choices are intentionally selective and provocative rather than explanatory.

Spatially, I have a preference toward conventions of pictorial perspective rather than an over reliance on illusions of linear perspective and atmospheric volume. Pictorial perspective emphasizes the picture plane edge and placement, overlapping and scale of objects rather than observational depiction of objects in a volume of space. Shape, contour edge and colour become the active elements over value, and form. I will sacrifice accuracy in manipulating scale and spatial volumes to achieve my metaphorical ends.

The use of the figure is both analytical and emotional. I have not posed and painted directly from the model for my paintings. My studio drawings and photo references are two dimensional and offer more allowances to alter and negotiate the figure to fit my compositional interests. In other words, the sanctity of the observed figure is diminished by further manipulating my own interpretations of the figure.
Edward Huner
Apr 22, 2021

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