Jesse Edwards lives in a downtown studio that is packed with his paintings. They lean in stacks and protrude in piles. His bed is a sack on the floor, which is littered with fast food packaging, art books and objects he uses for his still lifes, including a skull, a skateboard, pop cans, bongs, porn magazines, shredded dolls, a toy cop car and the odd piece of fruit.
Jesse Edwards, 29, is a formal easel painter living a highly informal life. In spite of his thuggish behavior and attitude, most of the Seattle art community has been very welcoming thanks to his undeniable talent.
He has a computer covered in graffiti on a wrecked table beside half an office chair, foam spilling out, that he found on the street.
Creature comforts are not his thing.
"I'm an artist," Jesse Edwards said. "I want to paint in oils like the old masters."
An aspiration to old master painting is not the first thing that comes to mind on meeting him.
He looks like a thug. At 29, he's tall and lean with thick muscles running up his tattooed arms and down his torso. His smile doesn't often reach his eyes, which bore into people.
"I'm an ex-thug," he said. "In the old day, I'd stomp people who disrespected my tags."
Stomp?
"Put them down so they don't get up. I was a kid. I didn't know any better."
Edwards considers art his salvation, the job that focuses his energy, calms him and gives him a leg up in the larger world.
(text from Seattle Post Intelligencer October 2006 (read the whole article here)
Jesse Edwards Website Jesseedwards.net
Jesse Edwards MYSPACE http://www.myspace.com/forthelordismyshepard
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This is part of an on going project that seeks to display self portraits from living artist in the United States. So if your an artist - please submit! To see all of the other submissions go here go here
Jesse Edwards is the Ninth artist to submit to the Art Talk Self Portraits
The other artist are:
Rob Byrd His website (http://ww2.coastal.edu/rtbyrd/)
Kieth Farris (visit his myspace here)
Charlie Allen Kraft (visit his site here)
Chris Ellis
Gwen Seemel (visit her at www.onefaceatatime.com)
Andrew Sloan
Robin Feeyly (visit her here at www.bungalowart.com)
Poet Robert Klein Engler (visit him here at RobertKleinEngler.com)
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