Author: ned
Portraits | 2014
My portraits are a desire to slow my work down, from a unbridled fury to a sober luminescence. This quest has led me to discover the precious subtleties of the human mouth, nose, and eyes, exploring them as the focal point and understanding these as the main identifying factor of the human face. Through this project I have learned that with these main points effectively defined, with the groundwork for emotion displayed, the rest can be left up to the viewers imagination. Using subtle queues like a cheek bone or a hairline I have played with the definition of beauty.
This series has been painted on 40.6 x 50.8 cm (16 x 20 inch) canvases.
This has been a mixed media project, I’ve used ball point pen, pencil, sharpie, acrylic paint, watercolour, calligraphy ink, charcoal, graphite, Indian ink, and spray paint.
Vancouver Skyline | 2013
Vancouver Skyline represents a transition from Ned’s work away from his Battling Egos series, into more recognizably figurative works. Playing with the wild emotions his unique backgrounds provide, the furious skies and ocean come alive, showing a prime example the sort of weather Vancouver experiences in the late stages of the winter. The painted was created using reference photographs taken at the lookout at Olympic Village, looking across the False Creek inlet spanning across Science World, BC Place, Rogers Arena, Plaza of Nations, and the Cambie Bridge.
This series is a triptych, where each painting is on a 91.44 x 121.92 cm (3 x 4 foot) canvas, totalling 12 feet wide when displayed together. They were painted all at the same time, lined up in a semi-circle.
Vancouver Skyline is painted primarily in acrylic paint, but also has with tar, charcoal, pastel, spray paint, and graphite.
For a full exploration and closeup images of the paintings, please view the fotoblog.
Hunter’s Game | 2013
Inspiration for Hunter’s Game spawned from Ned’s retreat to Northern British Columbia where he was surrounded by forest and guns. This project has drawn heavily from Battling Egos, exploring the concept of hunting with weapons in a more focused manner. All animals hunt, and when humans hunt we tend to describe them by their individual animalistic traits in their approach to hunting: sly as a fox, eyes like a hawk, growled like a bear, and so on. So using this idea, combined with Ned’s interest in mid 50s hunting symbolism that one could imagine in a Norman Rockwell painting, he has created a calamity of events with stare downs, mid air attacks, and flying angels and demons encouraging the fighters.
The paintings were created side by side, lined up in a semi-circle. The canvases are all 76.2 x 101.6 cm (2.5 x 3.3 ft).
The main medium used for the pieces is acrylic paint, but also has tar, charcoal, pastel, spray paint, and graphite.
For a full exploration and closeup images of the paintings, please view the fotoblog.
The Animals
This was a special project created for my book Lost Answers published on Feb 1st, 2013. The illustrations are printed throughout the book, associating themselves with a poem.
To clarify, each of the images represent a being in some shape or another.