Povey's DÉCOUSU is French for ‘disjointed’. During 2022 Edward Povey searched for ways to simplify his work, placing more responsibility on the figure to carry the exploration that occurs in the painting, rather than relying upon objects and settings to transmit his mixed emotions. DÉCOUSUE typifies this shift of emphasis, looking in one direction towards a more elegant future whilst also looking backwards to an earlier work called PERSONAL ENTANGLEMENT painted in 2007, depicting a figure in an impossible pose, signifying internal contortions.

Around the upper chest and forehead of the figure the skin is flushed with blood implying an emotional arousal, with the blouse shown in arterial red to underline this state. Povey is deliberately using his own distinct breed of realism to carry the lie that the position of the figure is humanly possible. People often carry absurd internal postures: unsustainable attitudes and beliefs that produce damaging behaviors, but they carefully cloak their attitudes with plausibility, much like Povey cloaks his impossible poses with Realism. This is merely an assumption about Povey’s artistic goals though, because whilst interpretation of the painting is reasonable, his paintings always begin in being essentially visual. An unexplained symphony of vulnerability.

Edward Povey was born in 1951 in London, England, growing up as an only child, painting obsessively and writing prose and music. He studied drawing at Eastbourne College for Art and Design, and then psychology and painting at The University of Wales. He became known as a mural painter in his twenties and was followed by the BBC through the making of 25 murals up to six stories in height, a period that he later came to regard as his apprenticeship.

He moved his studio to the Caribbean island of Grenada to concentrate on deepening his canvas painting for seven years, during which time, his works began finding their way into private collections in the United States. He studied colour and composition with established artists such as the Danish architectural abstractionist Paul Klose, the American colourist Malcolm T. Liepke, and the Belgian art dealer Jan de Maere. By 1991, he was showing in John Whitney Payson’s New York gallery beside 20th Century American masters, and other galleries spanning seven countries over the coming three decades.

In 1991 The University of Wales commissioned Edward Povey to create a major 20 x 40-foot painting for a chamber concert hall in Wales, for which he designed a dense narrative work comprising seven panels framed by trompe-l'œil stonework. By the year 2000, Povey’s work was acquired by prominent institutions including The National Museum of Wales; MOMA Wales; the National Library of Wales; the Glynn Vivien Art Museum; the Anglesey Museum Art Collection and numerous corporate art collections, and in 2018 The British Library documented his career for the British nation.

Povey was unusually sensitive and empathic child; prone to fainting. Personal experiences steeped in adventure - and at times tumultuous, he has had three marriages through two wars, in Israel and in the Caribbean; thus, it is no coincidence that he is preoccupied with the human experience. We follow a clear arc through his paintings, from perspectives on society in his 1970s’ murals, through family psychology and symbolism in his works of the 1990s, then culminating with insights into individual human vulnerability and mortality in his current paintings. He lives and works in Devon, England, and still devotes up to a hundred hours a week to his work.