Structure and Imagery

Paul Edwards, Small Lion Tamer Paul Edwards: Lion Tamers installation view. Paul Edwards: Lion Tamers Through July 15, 2018 Tops at Madison Avenue Park 151 Madison Avenue Memphis, TN 38104 Tops is excited to exhibit two paintings from Paul Edwards  Lion Tamers   series at the Madison Avenue Park space.  Paul Lynn Edwards (1948-2014) was raised in Detroit, MI. He was a veteran of the Vietnam War and was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. After his service, he moved to Memphis to attend the Memphis Academy of Art where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting in 1981. He then attended Yale University where he earned a Master of Fine Arts in painting in 1986. Paul moved to New York after school where he taught at the School of Visual Arts and regularly showed his work at the Allan Stone Gallery. By the mid 90's Paul had returned to Memphis to focus on his painting. He often lived in makeshift studios that he created in dilapidated ...

This post presents the work of the expressionistic, figurative painter, Paul Edwards. Edwards was born in Detroit, but has spent a good portion of his life in the South; primarily Mississippi and Tennessee. After serving in Vietnam (for which he received a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star), Edwards attended the Art Academy in Memphis (now the Memphis College of Art) and eventually went on to earn an MFA from Yale University. He graduated from Yale in the same class as  John Currin, Sean Landers and other notables. After school he moved from New Haven, CT to New York where he drove a cab and taught a color theory class at the School of Visual Arts. During this time he had success with regular showings at the Alan Stone Gallery in Manhattan before moving to California for a brief period. Since then Edwards has spent most of his time in the deep South living in makeshift studios in derelict buildings and garages. Edwards recently built his own house and stud...