Konstantin Vengerowsky/Clarendon Citizen
Edwards creates driftwood masterpieces
You don’t have to paint on canvas to be an artist. Take Wade Edwards for example, who has created masterpieces on the most unlikely surface, driftwood. He has been painting on driftwood for the last 20 years.
“It’s a lot easier to paint on and it’s something original, something you can’t reproduce,” he said.
The wood he paints on varies from a few inches up to 9 feet. Edwards said he tries to find flat pieces that don’t have any branches on them and are soled and cleanable. Most of the driftwood he finds is in the Santee area, mainly in swamps and overgrown areas, but lately it has become more scarce.
“I don’t know if it had to do with Hurricane Hugo coming through here in 1989, but driftwood back then was a lot easier to find,” he said.
Although driftwood is his primary focus right now, it is not the only surface that Edwards paints on. He does everything from canvas to walls, glass, wood, paper and ceramics. He even paints on antique saws. Edwards said he also likes to make 3-D moving sculptures. Edwards said that other artists have not influenced him. He likes to come up with his own ideas and experiment with them.
“I don’t consider myself an artist,” he said. “Just somebody who can create and I strive to share my work as a gift to others.”
He has been creating things literally since he was born. He said that his memory is so good that he remembers sitting in his high chair and drawing fish at eight-months-old.
“That’s the first thing I remember doing,” Edwards said.
He painted his first acrylic piece in the eighth grade, a 24x20 inch work of art of a deer.
Originally from Raleigh, N.C., he moved to Manning with his mother when he was 16-years-old and graduated from Manning High School in 1988. He attended four different colleges. He said that his original plan was to go to medical school, but that his passion took the best of him. He moved back to Raleigh in 1995 and worked in the picture framing business for a while. His whole life he has been moving back and forth from North to South Carolina.
“I would do a job that called for up to 200 or more frames a week. It took a lot of time away from art.” he said.
In 2009 he decided to move back to Manning and get back into art full-time. His favorite place to paint is at his parents’ house on Goat Island.
As far as theme is concerned, Edwards works on a broad spectrum as well. He likes to paint realism (wildlife and people), in which he says anatomical accuracy for him is a major factor. He also likes design, where detail is very important.
“My favorite would probably be more of a design-detailed theme, or what I call symmetrical surrealism,” he said. Edwards also said that he is very intrigued with music design. He said that he eventually wants to create works that combine sound with special effect video.
“Incorporating sound with video will offer a new realm of experience to others,” he said. “I’ve got it all in my head, the next step is to extract it and reproduce it accurately using various means and technology.”
If you are interested in Edwards work, contact him directly at (919) 669-0139 or email him at wadeedwards2@gmail.com. Edwards also uses popular social media such as Facebook to promote his work.
