"The concept for Table began with the photograph of two sleeping lovers in a university library in Buenos Aires, sent to Edward Povey by the visual artist Rosalía D’Amilio with whom he had dealings. The image inspired him, and for some months he attempted to transpose the couple onto a fully laid dinner table, causing what would have been a simply romantic idea to become pleasingly ambiguous.

Nonetheless unsatisfied, he laid the design aside for almost two years, during which time his paintings became more visceral and achingly human. In the summer of 2022, he returned to the concept because now he realized that the relationship between a single curled, foetus-like figure and a shambles of cutlery and glasses produced a disturbing, glittering and strongly mysterious situation for a painting.

The table is seen in a mixed perspective reminiscent of the paintings of the Workshop of Robert Campin (c.1375–1444). We apparently look vertically down upon the tabletop whilst paradoxically looking horizontally at the skirt of its cloth. Given that canvases are flat, Povey regards his use of mixed pre-Renaissance perspectives as a type of visual honesty (the table is actually round, therefore we see it as round).

Meanwhile the figure, glasses, cutlery, and tomatoes are seen from a diagonal angle – all these perspectives combining to become remarkably believable as a single viewpoint.

As usual, Povey narrows the tonal range causing an intentionally dim and haunting scene, employing Raphael’s Verdaccio palette, borrowed from his Ansidei Madonna altarpiece of 1505-1507, and using it as a base for a range of translucent coloured glazes.

This is a direct mirror of Edward Povey’s experience of life, as being on the one hand beautiful, twinkling and delicate, but also inexplicable, tender and dangerous." - Edward Povey

Edward Povey was born in 1951 in London, England, growing up as an only child, painting obsessively and writing prose and music. He studied drawing at Eastbourne College for Art and Design, and then psychology and painting at The University of Wales. He became known as a mural painter in his twenties and was followed by the BBC through the making of 25 murals up to six stories in height, a period that he later came to regard as his apprenticeship.

He moved his studio to the Caribbean island of Grenada to concentrate on deepening his canvas painting for seven years, during which time, his works began finding their way into private collections in the United States. He studied colour and composition with established artists such as the Danish architectural abstractionist Paul Klose, the American colourist Malcolm T. Liepke, and the Belgian art dealer Jan de Maere. By 1991, he was showing in John Whitney Payson’s New York gallery beside 20th Century American masters, and other galleries spanning seven countries over the coming three decades.

In 1991 The University of Wales commissioned Edward Povey to create a major 20 x 40 foot painting for a chamber concert hall in Wales, for which he designed a dense narrative work comprising seven panels framed by trompe-l'œil stonework.

By the year 2000, Povey’s work was acquired by prominent institutions including The National Museum of Wales; MOMA Wales; the National Library of Wales; the Glynn Vivien Art Museum; the Anglesey Museum Art Collection and numerous corporate art collections, and in 2018 The British Library documented his career for the British nation.

Povey was unusually sensitive and empathic child; prone to fainting. Personal experiences steeped in adventure - and at times tumultuous, he has had three marriages through two wars, in Israel and in the Caribbean; thus, it is no coincidence that he is preoccupied with the human experience. We follow a clear arc through his paintings, from perspectives on society in his 1970s’ murals, through family psychology and symbolism in his works of the 1990s, then culminating with insights into individual human vulnerability and mortality in his current paintings.

He lives and works in Devon, England, and still devotes up to a hundred hours a week to his work.

Modelling courtesy of American writer Andrea Harper.