Edward Walton Wilcox, Merry Christmas, 2008

Merry Karnowsky Gallery is proud to present a solo exhibition by artist Edward Walton Wilcox. Wilcox’s sepia-toned gothic paintings and Medieval-style altarpieces merge classical technique with modern perception.

Wilcox’s haunting paintings of young blond girls and landscapes of beauty and impeding disaster are seeped in symbolic context. Warm umbers accentuated with subtle flesh tones are achieved through a series of burnishingand glazing techniques, giving the work a shadowy depth seldom seen since the Illuminists of the 1800’s.

Edward Walton Wilcox, Sofia, 2007

While Wilcox’s paintings reference the highly romanticized past of previous centuries, his constructions evoke religious iconography dating back to the beginning of mankind’s search for salvation. A carved wooden altarpiece of Noah’s Ark includes sea dragons and black birds circling its gothic spires. The back room of the exhibition is transformed into a snowy winter’s day, with a full-size wagon carrying a simple wooden coffin.

The artist explains, “My work is a moral critique of a world attempting to shroud itself in beauty and diversion in the midst of its own collapse. My intention is for the work to have a preternatural effect on the viewer; evoking at times a sense of awe, terror, insignificance, romantic sensuality, allusions to our self-destructive nature, the temporal nature of beauty and life, and the decay of the material world as a constant of which we are always aware.” 

Edward Walton Wilcox, Windmill Nederlands, 2008

Originally from West Palm Beach, Florida, Wilcox earned a BFA in Painting with high honors from the University of Florida, where he also received the Presidential Award for Excellence in the Arts.

Wilcox’s work has shown in California, New York, Florida, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and has appeared in publications such as The LA Times, Juxtapoz, Coagula Art Journal and FLAUNT Magazine.

Apr 25 - May 23, 2009. www.merrykarnowskygallery.com