Austin Eddy: Biography

 

 
Austin Eddy (1986, United States)

Ask Austin Eddy what his work is about and he will answer without hesitation: love and loneliness. Nothing is concealed. To him the work is formally and literally black and white, yet far from simple. By painting on raw canvas and restricting both palette and scale, Austin aims for complete honesty—without color there are no other tricks to rely on. His broad vocabulary of marks and paint handling on the raw canvas echoes the complexity of a single raw emotion, whether it captures lovers caught in a moment at night or the hollow weight of loneliness. At the same time, Eddy’s playful, inventive mark making lends the work a lighter, more fun side. The paintings reflect on history and progress at once, letting the viewer almost trace how each surface was built from carefully placed marks, mistakes, and solutions. In many ways the raw canvas sets Austin up for some kind of mistake, yet you rarely see one left unresolved. Eddy shows real intelligence in handling that kind of problem.

Austin Eddy (b. 1986) earned his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009 and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. In 2012 he exhibited at galleries in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Diego, and in 2013 in Puerto Rico, New York, and Copenhagen.