Silver Lining is Simon Edwards third exhibition at Milford Galleries Dunedin and it conclusively shows that he has developed into an outstanding painter in a startlingly brief period of time. In investigating the Canterbury landscape he redefines it.

The structural sense of these paintings is accurate both to the physicality of the landscape and its emotional character. The artist is standing, looking across and down. His viewpoint is that of an insider and primarily he is examining the particularities of the Canterbury landscape from a reverse of the norm: that is he is looking back from the high country across the plains to the coast. He sees and presents the monumentality and inter-relationship of the skyscape and landscape – the geometry of the farmed landscape sits underneath and is dominated by the organic presence of weather (as clouds).

These paintings have a representational quality but within the imposed restrictions of a primarily monotonal palette Edwards engages also in an exhilarating game with light.