on ricardo edwards

I first saw Ricardo Edwards’s work in a group show from the Kingston Biennial. The colors stopped me—vibrant, strange, alive—but it was the stillness of his portraits that stayed with me. His figures seem held in some quiet in-between: looking back, looking inward. His paintings are tender and shadowed and deeply Black.

I recently added one of his pieces to the house. It’s called Strange Fruit, and it hangs in the hallway where the light shifts most during the day. There’s something about the way it watches, how it holds space. His use of oil is deliberate, almost reverent. And the faces—often unnamed, but familiar—remind me of people I know, people I come from.

It means something to live with work like this. To be surrounded by art that tells the truth in color and silence.

-L