Vikings of the modern world

‘VIKINGS of the Modern World’ is the title of an exhibition of recent paintings by the artist Jackie Edwards which will be on public view at the Pigyard Gallery in Spectrum Art and Framing in Selskar from October 20 to November 10.

Jackie was born in Croydon to Irish parents and though she has lived in County Wexford most of her life, her accent still bears the mischievous cockney twang.

She has been painting since childhood and attended Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design. Her work has been shown since 1989 in Dublin, Belfast, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin and London and can be found in collections worldwide, including the Irish state collection (OPW).

Jackie received both the Drawing Prize and the Portraiture Prize at the Royal Ulster Academy show in Belfast in 2015 and was a finalist in her heat in the ‘Sky Portrait Artist of the Year’ earlier this year.

‘I am very much looking forward to this exhibition, my first solo show in Wexford for many years. I held my very first exhibition in the County Hotel during the 1989 Opera Festival, so it is especially poignant for me to be showing again, this time at the Pigyard Gallery.’

‘I met many of the models I use for my paintings on the set of the TV series ‘Vikings’. I have had the pleasure of being involved as a background artist there for the last five years. You might just recognise one or two of them in this exhibition’, said Jackie.

Her paintings are intensely detailed figurative works where the realism and drama is heightened and brought sharply into focus. Working on linen or prepared panel, the effects are achieved through a painstaking technique of layered strokes of coloured glazes over a monochrome underpainting (a grisaille) to create a vibrant surface, a mixture of oil and egg tempera, in a method developed by early renaissance masters in the 15th century to create luminous paintings. However, while these techniques were developed to portray saints and princes, Jackie Edwards deploys them in bringing to life people on the margins.

The figures in Edwards’ paintings are more likely to be paupers than princes, with bikers, down-and-outs, punks and poets often the portraits she chooses to paint. She likes to paint people in costume and faces of character and greatly enjoyed the award of an artists’ residency to work in Mexico in 2017.

In her latest exhibition, not content with having convincingly achieved every hair, wrinkle and pore, skin overlaid with tattoos, ageing skin with blemishes, thread veins and stubble, Edwards now introduces themes of conflict, anguish, movement and fantasy into the paintings.

A dedicated and undaunted artist, she is constantly challenging herself to find novel and original ways to convey these new and difficult elements from her imagination.

Several of the paintings in this show tell a story or carry a strong idea or feelings beyond the impressively realistic depictions which first draw the viewer to them.

But alongside the darker emotions, there is also humour to be found here and perhaps even some of that charming cockney cheek. Alongside this collection of original works the Pigyard will also be showing a collection of Jackie Edwards’ prints

I MET MANY OF THE MODELS I USE FOR MY PAINTINGS ON THE SET OF THE TV SERIES ‘VIKINGS’ YOU MIGHT JUST RECOGNISE OR TWO OF THEM