Edward Povey was born in 1951 in London, England, and grew up as an only child, painting obsessively and writing prose and music. He studied drawing at Eastbourne College of Art and Design, and then psychology and painting at The University of Wales. While in his twenties, he made his name as a mural painter, and was filmed by the BBC while he created 25 massive murals. He later came to regard this period as his apprenticeship.

In 1982 he moved his studio to the Caribbean Island of Grenada for seven years. This adventurous decision was taken to allow him to concentrate on painting on canvas and to give himself a fresh vision away from the fame and distractions derived from his murals. During this time his work began to be acquired by collectors in the United States. He studied color and composition with established artists such as the Danish architectural abstractionist Paul Klose, the American colorist 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 over the next three decades his work was on exhibition in galleries spanning seven countries.

In 1991 The University of Wales commissioned Povey to create a major painting for a chamber concert hall in Wales, measuring 20 x 40 feet, for which he designed a work with intensely direct narrative, comprising seven panels framed by trompe-l’oeil stonework. The mural is called the Hall of Illusion, and is considered one of the ten most important university owned artworks, as stated by the London Times.

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 is preoccupied with the human experience in general, and his own personal experiences steeped in adventure. As a child he was unusually sensitive and empathic, prone to fainting. He has had three marriages through two wars, in Israel and in the Caribbean. There is a clear development in his art, from observations on society in his 1970s’ murals, through family psychology and symbolism in his works of the 1990s, and culminating with insights into individual human vulnerability and mortality in his current paintings.

His paintings were most recently exhibited in 2023 at the European Museum of Modern Art, Barcelona, described by the museum as a curated selection of the most outstanding artists in contemporary representational art. He lives and works in Devon, England, and still devotes up to a hundred hours a week to his work.

Edward Povey

Painting Insights