Ben Edmunds

Ben Edmunds (b. 1994, Norwich, UK) creates his colour field paintings by layering mists of fabric dyes, sprayed directly onto washed canvas. Over time, the colours shift and bleed into one another to create a spectrum of gradients across the painting: erasing definite distinctions between green, blue, purple. Using only three dyes: cyan, yellow and magenta, Edmunds is particularly interested in blue as a colour that almost doesn’t exist in nature. It appears in his paintings only as an ever-changing combination of cyan and magenta, something that shifts between sky and the sea. As an open-ended colour, it represents dreaming, exploration and adventure. For Edmunds, painting is an adventure for artists and viewers, drawing from his personal history of sailing, windsurfing and cycling, he frames abstraction as an adventure sport. In 2019, Edmunds registered his company Aspirational Equipment - a pseudo-sports brand for romantics, creating “tools for dreamers”. Under its umbrella of paintings, objects and functional garments, it questions the supposed anti-utilitarianism of painting and asks the question “What can an artwork do?”