Studio chaos suits Edwards' style

May 30, 2005
McLean Edwards in his Sydney studio, where he normally has about 20
paintings on the go.

McLean Edwards in his Sydney studio, where he normally has about 20 paintings on the go.
Photo: Edwina Pickles

Sydney artist McLean Edwards has made a career out of putting other people's demons on canvas, writes Clay Lucas.

When Sydney art dealer Martin Browne agreed to take on young figurative painter McLean Edwards in 2002, it was on the condition that Edwards stop giving away his paintings.

"Somebody would be around and they'd say, 'Oh I like that', and he'd just hand it to them," laments Browne.

Handing his paintings out wasn't such a big deal in the 1990s when his work wasn't worth so much, says Browne. These days, Edwards' disturbing, sometimes comical and always surreal portraits go for close to $50,000 at auction.

"So," explains Browne, "there's waitresses out there that he once fancied at a noodle bar turning up at auction with paintings worth tens of thousand of dollars."

Edwards, 33, is an unpredictable character with a lithe mind, a wry turn of phrase and a three-pack-a-day smoking habit. He also earns a six-figure salary from art. His psychological portraits, usually delivered to his dealer with their wet oil paints still fuming, are a macabre hybrid of, say, a Biggles adventure story meets a painter of the Dutch "golden age" (the 17th century).

Edwards' paintings feature bizarre, netherworld characters, from perturbed Tintins to belligerent Animal Farm-style pigs, and occasionally even Edwards himself. There's a supporting cast of elephants, aircraft, little cars and shifty garden gnomes all screaming "Look at me!" crowded onto his canvases.

"I view my paintings as the best part of me," says Edwards, who, this week, stages his first Melbourne show. He's turned to cricketers, in various stages of psychological disintegration, for his subject matter.

"I figured cricketers were as good a subject as anything else," says a laconic Edwards.

"So many artworks these days are so bloody didactic. I almost picked cricketers because it was arbitrary.

"And because I dig the jumpers," he jokes.

The bizarre cricketing characters seem to have rather a lot going on in their lives.

Traditional sporting-club portraits give nothing away about the psychology of the sitter. Edwards has taken it to the other extreme, visualising some nasty corners of the human psyche and, sometimes, give you a bit of a chuckle - he decries the amount of "namby-pamby bullshit in the art world".

"You've just got to be whoever you're going to be and come what may," he says.

Judith Behan, from Canberra's Chapman Gallery, has been showing Edwards since 1998. He sells so well that she usually has a waiting list for his paintings. Not all of her buyers are fond of Edwards' "loose cannon" personality, though.

"He's likely to say anything, anytime, to anybody," she says. "But collectors who don't like his attitude and his language don't talk to him; they just buy his art."

The painter says he knew from age 13 that all he wanted to do was paint. Rembrandt was his childhood hero.

"To a degree, he's got to be everyone's childhood hero, hasn't he?" he asks.

Well, no. But then, not everyone sells their first collection of paintings for $11,000 when they're 17.

"That was a lot of money for a little prick at boarding school," cackles Edwards, who boarded while his parents moved from country to country as diplomats.

Edwards could be the latest instalment in a line of classical yet quirky Australian painters, such as William Dobell, Russell Drysdale and Donald Friend. He nominates Sidney Nolan, Tony Tuckson, Noel McKenna and, with a little embarrassment, Brett Whiteley, as influences.

Despite the success of his art, Edwards struggled through life for many years, blind drunk for much of the time.

"I was self-medicating," says Edwards, who was diagnosed as suffering from bipolar disorder in 2001.

Edwards now drinks less and paints more. And he's tried to stick to the deal of not giving away his paintings so often. He admits to giving too many away, having seen scores turn up at auction.

"It hurts me when I gave them as gifts," he says. "But I have to be positive about it. A friend of mine sold one the other day that enabled him to start up his own business. That made me happy and proud.

"Mind you," says Edwards with another cackle, "I would've rather he sold his car instead."

McLean Edwards

WHERE Silvershot Gallery, level 3, 167 Flinders Lane, city
WHEN Tomorrow until June 12
DETAILS Tel: 9666 4800


Our Advertisers