Ned Evans’ latest paintings reflect his enduring attention to the edge, as both a physical place and an idea—a site of tension, and a source of energy. An avid surfer and student of art and architecture, Evans contemplates the line between land and sea, between this part and that one. He spent years building artist studios and galleries around Los Angeles; while working on these construction sites, he recorded the process through photographs of the edges and joins, documenting those overlooked points of intersection and intervention essential to these structures. These experiences of the edge are evident in Close Relatives, whose works are animated by the interactions between shape and color, and defined by the relationships between individual components. Luminous swatches are stacked and joined to form architectonic images that resist the two-dimensionality of the canvas, and offer lessons in close observation.
Ned Evans is a painter and life-long surfer who lives and works in Venice, California. He received his BFA and MFA from the University of California Irvine in the 1970s, when local legends Billy Al Bengston, Robert Irwin, Ed Moses, Larry Bell, and Craig Kauffman taught there. Like other artists in LA’s Finish Fetish and Light and Space movements, Evans blends materials and sensibilities of life along the ocean with life in the studio, creating an aesthetic now considered original to California art.
Evans’ paintings, drawings, and resin sculptures have been displayed in museums including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Laguna Museum of Art, the Weisman Museum, the Bakersfield Museum of Art.