Edward Kay Artist

Here, as elsewhere the work is not entirely concerned with a subject but the practice of painting itself and processes of producing and reproducing images.

There is a genre of painting in Western Art History that tries to trick the viewer into momentarily thinking that they are looking at a real object rather than something represented. Within this tradition it’s a common joke to make a painting that looks like the back of a canvas. It’s a cliché associated with Trompe L’Œil painting. Generally speaking few observers would be fooled by this type of deceit. It’s more of an amusing endeavour that borders on decorative painting and folk traditions while maintaining the technical display of more serious genres.

The Private Life of Paintings uses the reverse of a canvas as a recurring motif. The paintings are made in an illustrative, lumpen way which is to ignore the usual approach and point of Trompe L’Œil painting, where detail is the sine qua non of the genre. Ideas that painting could be believable or deceptive are put to one side. The subject is accepted as an established tradition and re-visited in an absurd manner. The exaggerated parts of the depicted stretchers provide a visual and ideological framework upon which to deploy an idea of painting and applied colour.

Some of these paintings were originally shown at Rob Tuffnell’s gallery in Covent Garden in 2023…

The exhibition opened just before Easter so they followed (or appeared to follow) Good Friday traditions of covering images or turning paintings to face the wall.

All the paintings took their titles from the great and good of familiar British art history, mostly resident in the centre of London at the nearby National Gallery and Tate Britain.