Ed Valentine : Good Paintings

Please join the Hofheimer Gallery on Saturday, August 7 from 1 to 4pm for the opening reception of GOOD PAINTING

“I enjoy building these little portraits, arranging the parts, the structure of it, juggling the visual and the conceptual, solving little problems and stumbling across ideas during the process. 

I’m not trying to make important work or work that fits into the cannon of art history. I’m simply trying to make good paintings. 

For me, it all simply boils down to making slightly odd and interesting things to look at, things which are halting and provoke a level of inquiry. It is mostly no more complicated than that. Of course, there are specifics and complexities within each piece but other than titles and from time to time and a few words, clarification just seems to deflate the work. Asking for more begins to feel closer to a confession being forced from you by the police.  

I see these portraits as gently provoking a thought in the viewer. It's not my job to tell people what to think, but rather, through something that is just a bit out of the ordinary show them perhaps the most interesting thing they have seen that day, a good painting. “

-Ed Valentine