When John Edward (Ed) Hudson wasn’t painting colorful mixed media abstractions, he might have been restoring historical properties, playing piano and guitar, painting family portrait reproductions, reading books on philosophy or planetary science, painting movie backdrops, or landscaping his beautiful garden. Hudson’s assemblages were emblematic of his multifaceted career; myriad creative pursuits can layer together to enrich one’s own life and the lives of others.
Born in 1950 in Milledgeville, Georgia, Hudson retained his connection to Georgia—that “undeniable sense of place”—throughout his career. This was despite many excursions nationally and internationally, starting at age 17 with summer school in Evian, France. Persevering through educational disappointments in his youth in the 1960s, he completed an associate’s degree at Gordon Military College (UGA Gordon State College) to pursue his true passion for art and art history, an active interest since childhood. His graduation from the Lamar Dodd School of Art in 1975 would finally bring him into the limelight of the fine art world. The year he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting, he was in several group exhibitions including the Georgia Jubilee Art Exhibition and the Albany Visual Arts Festival Exhibition. Soon after, though briefly, he was also represented by Fay Gold Gallery in Atlanta.
The fine art world, however, provided personal and professional setbacks, so Hudson diversified his creative portfolio of skills. For example, from 1978 to 2003, he served variously as set decorator, production assistant, and scenic painter for several films (like The Gold Bug (1980) and The Displaced Person (1977)) under the tutelage of New York art directors Charles Bennett and Patrizia von Brandenstein. Also in the 1970s, he ventured to the South of France to stay on the property of Paris Theatre director Madame Simone Jarnach, which would change the course of his life. The two would become close friends, and Hudson returned to the United States with a renewed vigor for painting. After buying a property in Morgan County, Georgia, where he could do his work, more residencies in Birmingham, England, and San Francisco, as well as reluctant self-promotion would follow. Described as a private, introspective man, Hudson didn’t often publicize his artistic projects or accolades, but his work has still ended up in the private collections of the Georgia Museum of Art, Gordon State University, and in private collections across the United States. Hudson had solo exhibitions at both Madison-Morgan Cultural Center (1982) and the Lamar Dodd Jackson Street Gallery for the University of Georgia (1976 and 1981). He was also in two group exhibitions at Madison-Morgan Cultural Center in 1979 and 1984, the latter of which was “Ten Artists – Ten Years” at Two Nine One Gallery and Madison-Morgan Cultural Center. This show featured works by Benny Andrews, George Beattie, Annette Cone-Skelton, Herbert Creecy, Lamar Dodd, Tom Fergusen, Jim Herbert, Sidney Guberman, and Joseph Perrin.
Hudson’s work has been described as “fanciful and poetic” with “vibrant color manipulation” so it’s no surprise that expressive painters like Walter Anderson, as well as Black Mountain College artists like Willem de Kooning, Joseph Albers, and Cy Twombly were visual and theoretical inspiration for him. The rhythm and feeling of classical music and nature make Hudson’s abstract paintings and collages uplifting and memorable. Motivated and multi-talented, Edward Hudson chose his own personal path, worked to find his own direction, and followed it.