A proper artist should be able to turn his hand to virtually any subject or medium. Dudley Edwards is the living proof of that assertion.
Since leaving Bradford Art College in 1964, the Halifax-born artist has designed psychedelic murals for Carnaby Street, painted Paul McCartney’s piano – he still uses it – designed album covers, book jackets, concert posters, taken photographs for Northern Ballet, painted pictures and made ceramics and rugs and wall hangings.
He said: “I identify myself with the artists who used to be around, like William Morris, people who would turn their hand to various things. If you’re an artist you can paint or draw anything.”
Examples of Dudley’s impressive array of expressive skills can be seen for the next month at Yorkshire Craft Centre in Bradford College’s Lister Building.
Across Great Horton Road is the college building where Frank Johnson taught drawing to Dudley and contemporaries such as David Oxtoby, John Loker, Norman Stevens, Doug Binder and David Vaughan. David Hockney, a former student, had gone off to London’s Royal College of Art where everything he painted turn to gold.
Although Dudley has returned occasionally to do part-time teaching, this is the first time he has had an exhibition at the college, and On the Cusp is a big one, consisting of about 140 pieces of work.
As a student in drab post-war Britain, where everything seemed black and white, he was inspired, partly, by the brightly coloured front doors of immigrant families.
“We were knocked out by the vivid colours. People shied away from bright colours in those days,” he said. He likes to contrast light and dark, warmth and coolness, curves and rectangles, in his paintings. He paints figures in rooms or landscapes without conventional perspective.
“There’s no vanishing point in my paintings; movement is always around the surface. I’ve never been keen on the high Renaissance. I preferred the earlier period of Giotto,” he added.
His remarkable career has been marked by partnerships. In the mid-1960s he teamed up with Doug Binder and David Vaughan and as BEV they made a name for themselves by painting cars, including one used for a Kinks record cover.
After that Dudley designed psychedelic posters and record covers with Mike McInnerney, who went on to design the album cover for Tommy by The Who.
Since 1997 his partnership with his wife Madeleine, known as AMAZED Ltd, has produced bespoke rugs and wall-hangings that have been sufficiently popular, both with corporations and celebrities, to enable the couple to plan to move from their home in Wetherby to a cottage situated between Leyburn and Richmond.
And for the last 13 years Dudley’s brightly coloured oil paintings have been selling as well.
“Since the Millennium I have started to make a living out of selling my paintings. Originally I had to do the graphics to make ends meet. My pictures sell for anything between £2,000 and £13,000. The Sixties have carried me through,” he said, meaning that people have come to his paintings through his earlier commercial work.
On the Cusp runs at the Yorkshire Craft Centre, Carlton Street, Bradford, from today until December 13. Opening hours are Monday to Friday, 10.30am to 4pm.