PAST | Crust: Thaddeus Radell & Alex Edwards

CRUST exhibits the paintings of Thaddeus Radell and Alex Edwards. Radell’s figurative works evolve with successive layers of paint in his New York studio, while Edwards pushes paint en plein air in the English countryside. Radell’s studio work has an inescapable existentialism—an interiority—skin, blood, and bones. At the same time, Edwards’ on-site landscapes are an exteriority—crust, mantle, and core.

Radell's recent "shroud" paintings are infused with history and mystery. Painted on loose strips of burlap, one first thinks of the "Shroud of Turin," with its vague body impression; however, Radell's works are bold and built, yet nothing is overtly defined. The artisans of the Fayum funerary portraits in Roman Egypt created shrouds while the subject was alive, but intended for the journey to the afterlife. Radell's heavily impastoed works result in figures that merge body and soul. In his head studies details are buried and excavated, lost and then found as facial features emerge from chunks of wax and oil paint.

The immediacy in Edwards’ work is laid upon the canvas. His shorthand for the lay of the land, the grade of the hills, and the colors of grasses and other flora in a shifting sky are effectively painted in thick oil paint applied with brushes, cards, and knives. Clouds roll in and out, hues shift with the light, and shadows come and go—his paintings are a time-lapse rendered into a single moment. 

Radell lives and paints in upstate New York and is a professor of art at The Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC). Edwards lives and paints in Dorset in the southwest of England. His working life has seen him living and working for 30 years in the safari business in East Africa.