23rd Mar 2022

Work of the Week: Happy Hippie Home by Ed Saye


This work is an expansive pause between here and there, now and then, peppered with patches of luminescence.

The creaturely and the mystical, the alien and the terrestrial co-exist in a medley palette distinctive to Saye’s works. From a distance, the composition thrums, muted by the harmonising of the colours; up close, the vividness of certain tones are apparent, a brighter note. There’s a lot going on in this painting – in terms of technique, ambience, and representation – but it isn’t busy. Instead it inhabits a quiescence drawn from the balanced forces of expectation and retrospection. Ed Saye describes his works as “contemporary visions of paradise lost”.

The dwelling places – here an exquisite glass house –  that populate his paintings speak to utopian aspirations, paradise projects both lost and ongoing, as those dreamt up by that pinnacle cultural achievement, modernist architecture, as well as hippie counter-culture. Both are seen in relation to the natural world: the signature plant life of Saye’s works rendered in fulsome silhouettes. Peter Doig’s transfiguring landscapes and Stefan Kürten’s architecture-based compositions, mingling man-made structures with nature, are both contemporary resonances with Saye’s works. This work is an expansive pause between here and there, now and then, peppered with patches of luminescence.

Ed’s distinctive works, creating an indelible atmosphere, have been on display almost every year since he graduated from the Slade in 2009. In his solo show, No Promised Land , in London 2016 the work put reviewer Paul Carey-Kent to “in mind of the famous characterisation of the 1960’s: if you can remember them, you weren’t there.” Ed is one of our Master artists, and a particularly investable one.  

Words by Maggie

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