| Edward Blake Christmas
Piper, the elder son of John and Myfanwy Piper, studied at Bath Academy
of Art, Corsham and the Slade School in London. While scraping by with
photographs for the Shell County Guides and graphic design commissions,
he had one real obsession in figurative art: girls. He brought several
styles to bear on his desired subject. In her monograph for the Edward
Piper retrospective at David Messum Fine Art, in spring 2000, Jenny Pery
wrote: 'His main interest was in girls, and for most of his life he made
paintings of girls that were as celebratory as they were frankly sexual.
The pictures are not portraits, although each model has her own
individuality. The models that twist and display in a riot of flowers
and patterned garments are studied not as objects of sexual arousal but
with the same appreciation that an exotic flower might be studied...
looking at a painting by Edward Piper is invariably cheering and
invigorating'. |