Ed Green

As a Fine Artist during the pandemic, it has been frustrating not being able to go into the studio. Being restrained to my room, both my creativity and ability to do work has suffered at university. I have had to adapt, even if that meant moving my mattress into the hallway, my duvet in the shower and taking apart some of my room. “room lens” features only work that I have made over the lockdowns. The title being a play on words for doing an art degree online over Zoom. I have been exploring making abstract work, specifically paintings.

My paintings are intuitive, as I explore paint and respond to marks made, painting organically in the moment.

I like to work on a large scale, and this project encapsulates my willingness to work as large as my workspace provides. The project stimulated from my frustration with the response to my abstract paintings. The idea was to make something bigger than a painting, that an experience was forced upon the viewer. The project was partly inspired by my experience at the ‘In Real Life’ exhibition, by Olafur Eliasson at the Tate Modern. My other inspirations have come from the St Ives School of artists, as well as many of the great abstract expressionists. Included in the room is only one representational piece. It is a key piece I made over the first lockdown, for the Bristol Refugee Arts Collective project I was involved in. The painting was for a friend Sam, a Palestinian refugee. The painting represents hope to those forced from their homes, who keep their home key as a memento and symbol of their right to return. I received a text from Sam recently saying ‘England lockdown 1 year, Gaza lockdown 15 years’. In a project centered around lockdown, I felt it was a meaningful token.

Instagram: @ed_phthalogreen