Ed Jeavons was born in the West Midlands and studied Fine Art at Leeds Beckett University (BA Hons) and Chelsea College of Art (MA). He was recently awarded the John Purcell Paper Printmaking Award (2025) and has exhibited widely in solo and group shows across the UK. Recent exhibitions include The Derby Print Open, Banks Mill Studios (2024); West Midlands Open, New Art Gallery, Walsall (2022); The Lido Open, Lido Stores, Margate (2021); Nou Wave I, The Old Biscuit Factory, London (2019); Material Flow, Museum in the Park, Stroud (2019); and Go Figure, Guggleton Art Gallery, Dorset (2019).

His work was featured in The State of Art: Contemporary British Abstract Painting (BareHill Publishing) and he has received an Arts Council England Individual Artist Award.

Alongside his practice, Ed is Course Leader for the Foundation Diploma in Art, Design and Media Course at Stafford College. Previously he taught Fine Art at Zhengzhou University, China, and was Artist-in-Residence at Shanghai Concord Bilingual School.

Statement

There are echoes of Archeology in painting. I begin with no preconceived idea of what I might find. Day by day layers are built up and removed in the hope of discovering something previously unseen or felt. Most days I encounter dead ends and frustration. However occasionally a magical alchemy occurs between materials, colours and marks that opens up a place that I haven’t experienced before. In that moment inert materials spring to life like Geppetto’s Pinocchio.

These paintings are landscapes, though not of any specific place. My own energy is transferred into the work — not to illustrate feelings or tell a personal story, but to create spaces of belonging and connection

In an increasingly depersonalised and digitalised world it feels more urgent than ever to reconnect with raw matter and create places that are mysterious, beautiful and above all human.