Arts and culture

Beverley Minster.

“A lot of what I do now has come from personal research. I was drawing my inspiration from the area and there’s a huge wealth of abbeys in Yorkshire, like Byland Abbey, Rievaulx and Fountains.

"There was something about them which spoke to me, the fact that these huge objects of incredible beauty and learning are only fragments of what they were. They were like jewel boxes. The Reformation put paid to that. 

"That got me thinking about how medieval artists went about producing those, so I researched the techniques and materials of the time.”

Mixing egg tempera.

He often works with egg tempera, which is made with the yolk of the egg mixed from the raw pigment (bought from a long-established art shop in London). Pigments can be expensive.

"I am using a pigment made from lapis lazuli, which comes from Afghanistan. In mediaeval times it was reserved for images of the Virgin Mary. A little tiny pot cost £18 but you do get what you pay for and you do get fantastic results with these materials.”

Art school

Ed says art was always his strong subject at school and he ended up attending art school in Winchester. “Art school was quite an experience! It was a process of unlearning what I had learned before.

Ed Kluz.

"The course I did was fine art painting, and painting in today’s terms is a lot broader. Actually my final degree piece was a video installation. It was very art school. It was a critique on utopian architecture of the 1920’s. That was really extreme and I’ve now come back to my roots and I think the work I do now is a little bit easier to get into.”

The course also included more traditional classes in life drawing and how to make your own paint and he had a good grounding in art history. After leaving college Ed spent a couple of years working in cafes and bars to pay off his student loan, and then he came back to full-time painting.

Ed Kluz at work.

Ed read a 14th Century Italian work called Il Libro dell'Arte by Cennino Cennini to gain an insight into the world of medieval art. “It says how the artist should enter into his profession not for financial gain but for spiritual enlightenment. I think there are some artists who are only out to make a buck, but I think art should be more challenging than that.”

Luckily for him, art collectors seem to appreciate his work and are buying it. “So far it’s gone very well and people are collecting it. It’s always good to make a living from what you love doing.”