Bio
Edmond Praybe is a painter and draftsman concerned with the convergence of perception and abstraction. His work pairs intense direct observation of the motif with abstractions of structure, rhythm, shape, and color. He received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from the New York Studio School. Praybe’s work has been shown widely at several national juried and invitational exhibitions. He has been the recipient of the Hohenberg Travel Grant, two Mercedes Matter Awards, and was a National Parks Artist-In-Residence at Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland. Praybe teaches studio classes and lectures regularly in-person and online. He is a member of Zeuxis: An Association of Still Life Painters, and is currently represented by Tregony Gallery (Cornwall, UK), First Street Gallery (NYC), and Peterson Contemporary (Bend, OR).
Statement
“This drawing, like many of my drawings, grew throughout the course of its making. It began with an intense focus on the base of a maple tree and the surrounding woodland. It’s a bare-branched, late-winter maple on a friend’s property in a hollow of the Shenandoah Mountains. A tangle of forms I just couldn’t resist drawing. I wanted to make a note of every little shift in light and dark that I was seeing, in a very strict way. I was testing the limits of responding to a complex motif from observation. I didn’t want to let myself off easy. If something was not right, I erased it, fixed it, changed it to the clear patterns of line and light that I really saw. That intense central focus then spread out and grew – much like a tree actually grows – up and out. Over many sessions, strips of paper were taped on to accommodate the path of vision my eye was taking each day. With each addition I referred back to that beginning rectangle of the first sheet of paper. It became my visual anchor point, as well as the mass of entangled trunks, branches, vines, and ground plants from which everything else sprang.”
