Ed Moses: First, look at the paintings. Then we’ll shoot the shi

Blain|Southern presents an exhibition of paintings by LA artist Ed Moses, featuring a wide range of work all produced throughout the last decade. It will be the ninety-year-old artist’s first UK solo exhibition in ten years.

Rising to prominence in the Fifties alongside a group of artists associated with the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, Ed Moses is widely revered as one of the most innovative and influential painters of the American West Coast art scene. Deliberately eschewing artistic trends and movements throughout his career, he has avoided having a single signature style and to this day refuses categorisation.

Never working with preconceived ideas, experimentation and chance play an important role in the artist’s practice. Moses employs various tools and techniques, during his process paint might be poured, dripped, dragged or wiped down the canvas. Moses is not looking to control the process but rather be in tune with it – decisions are instinctive rather than calculated as he connects with the material in a way that he refuses to fully describe or explain. He works on up to 20 paintings at a time outdoors at his Venice Beach studio, discarding many along the way. ‘When they light up,‘ he says, ‘I keep them. And if they don’t light up, I don’t want them.’