Modelling courtesy of English fashion model Emily Poynton. DÉCOUSUE is French for ‘disjointed’ or ‘rambling’. During 2022 Edward Povey had begun to search for ways to simplify his work, placing more responsibility on the figure to carry the exploration that occurs in the painting, rather than relying upon objects and settings to transmit his mixed emotions. DÉCOUSUE typifies this shift of emphasis, looking in one direction towards a more elegant future whilst also looking backwards to an earlier work called PERSONAL ENTANGLEMENT painted in 2007, depicting a figure in an impossible pose, signifying internal contortions. Around the upper chest and forehead of the figure the skin is flushing with blood implying an emotional arousal, with the blouse shown in arterial red to underline this state. Povey is deliberately using his own distinct breed of realism to carry the lie that the position of the figure is humanly possible. People often carry absurd internal postures: unsustainable attitudes and beliefs that produce damaging behaviors, but they carefully cloak their attitudes with plausibility, much like Povey cloaks his impossible poses with Realism. This is merely an assumption about Povey’s artistic goals though, because whilst interpretation of the painting is reasonable, his paintings always begin in being essentially visual. An unexplained symphony of vulnerability.