A new art exhibition will explore memory, routine and the quiet drama of everyday life.
Hampshire-based artist Ed Saye will present a solo exhibition at Chapel Arts Studios' Chapel Gallery in Andover from October 16 to November 15.
The exhibition, titled Once Emerged from the Grey of Night, responds to Chapel Arts’ 2025 curatorial theme of remembrance.
Ed’s contemplation of the subject inspired him to draw links to nearby Sandham Memorial Chapel, reawakening his long- standing admiration for the work of celebrated British painter Sir Stanley Spencer.
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Ed said: "The invitation to exhibit got me thinking about Spencer’s murals at Sandham Memorial Chapel.
"His response to war was so defiantly unwarlike.
"Not battles, but floors being scrubbed, beds made, bread eaten.
"Intimate, bodily, repetitive. Profound in their commonplace, I wondered if I could follow that logic: painting my present, not as spectacle, but as the observance of the routine and ordinary."
The exhibition features a series of paintings that explore routine and the mundane, rendered in saturated, surreal colours.
Ed said: "My paintings are full of middle-aged men like me, avatars, playing golf, watering lawns, smoking, floating, lying down.
"They're sometimes pensive, sometimes radiant, sometimes both.
"There’s not much happening, except maybe the low-key drama of just being.
"The figures move through surreal, dusky landscapes, rendered in saturated, acidic hues, with the faint apocalyptic hum of too much light on a summer evening.
"It's as if a Grunewald altarpiece got lost inside a retro video game."
To achieve the distinctive atmosphere in his work, Ed combines traditional oil painting with digital drawing and image-making tools.
He said: "I use oil paint, but also digital drawing and image-making tools in the initial stages.
"I grew up alongside the birth of computer games but also exposed to painting and art. I loved the latter more than the former.
"At heart, I think I’m painting in defence of the everyday.
"And in defence of painting itself—a medium slow enough to hold conflicting things together: melancholy and joy, banality and wonder, digital noise and painterly touch."
A free artist talk with Ed and Gianni Notarianni will be held on Saturday, October 25, from 2pm to 3pm at The Chapel Gallery.
