Even though Edmondson had been drawing his entire life, when he went to college, he thought he wanted to study biology.

“It was the 1970s and Jane Goodall was my hero, I wanted to do what she was doing,” he said, referring to the research by the English primatologist and anthropologist. “But educational institutions didn’t think what she was doing was hard science so after my first year of college biology, I realized it was not for me.”

Edmondson had always loved drawing and found himself in an art education class.

“For the first time, I saw people 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 500 years ago, dealing with the same kinds of questions, and I felt like I was part of a long tradition instead of just a lone weirdo,” he said. “Art history was really what got me.”

Edmondson earned a bachelor of fine arts. from the University of Tennessee Knoxville and a master of fine arts. from Washington University in St. Louis. He received numerous grants and awards including Fulbright and DAAD fellowships to Germany, and residency fellowships to Artpark, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Santa Fe Art Institute and Kuenstlerwerkstatt Munich.

Edmondson met Blanden Art Museum Director Eric Anderson through a mutual friend and had been discussing presenting an exhibit at the Blanden for several years.

“Eric and I actually started talking about this pre-pandemic. Then the whole art world kind of shut down for a while,” Edmondson said.

Now, “Before Language” is on display at the Blanden until May 21.

Edmondson wrote in his artist statement for the exhibit, “The paintings in ‘Before Language’ are all attempts at giving visible form to the invisible content of daily life — explorations of moments and experiences too small, too vast, too vague or too complicated to be seen clearly.”

He said, “I’ve been doing this for over 40 years so I’ve played with a lot of materials and I play with a lot of different subject matter, but I keep finding myself circling back to formal abstraction. When you’re dealing with the purely abstract, you’re never dealing with a ‘what’, you’re always dealing with a ‘what if?'”

While in residency at a college, Edmondson explored new types of art and many of those pieces are in this exhibit.

“I’d been doing these really complicated generative system driven things that were really repetitive and time consuming. In a real life with a full-time job and a daughter at home, that practice was very beneficial but then when I found myself in a residency where I didn’t have anything to do but work in the studio, I needed to be able to move through ideas more rapidly,” he said. “This exhibition presents that, sort of a series of tangential explorations.”

Edmondson said it took some time to fully figure out what exactly he wanted this exhibit to be.

“The nature of the exhibition changed because we included a handful of these much, much smaller quickly made images I made with materials I was not accustomed to working with such as highlighters, Sharpies, gel pens, these non-art materials,” he said. “I’d been primarily producing large drawings and complicated sculptures made out of sheet material like paper and mylar. I didn’t really think of myself as a painter until this residency situation happened.”

Edmondson said the works in this exhibit date back to about 2014 up until the present.

“They’re not depictions of anything, they’re sort of reactions to experiences,” he said. “It kind of reveals a significant shift that’s taking place in my practice. I don’t know exactly where it’s headed, but often an initial idea we have gets kind of kidnapped by little discoveries that we make along the way and push us in really unexpected directions.”

One example of unexpected directions is a piece in the show called “Imaginary Friend”. Edmondson said, “It was actually two initial attempts at things that I was going to throw away until I laid one down on top of the other, so discovery plays a huge role.”

Anderson added that they even had to follow that air of exploration while setting up the exhibit at the Blanden.

“Greg was going to have some sculptural pieces as part of the exhibit and we were discussing how one would look on a pedestal. I had an open spot in the West Gallery, the permanent collection, so we took it over there to see how it looked and we all sort of stepped back and agreed it looked really good in there,” he said. “So we arranged for that piece to be on long term loan for the next two years as part of the permanent collection exhibit just because it fit really well. Like he said, you never know what’s going to work within a show until you get it in there.”

There will be an artist reception from 2 to 4 p.m. on April 23 at the Blanden and Anderson said the public is invited.

“Greg will be here and will provide an artist talk. We’d love to see everybody come and check it out,” he said. “It’s a really great exhibit especially coming out of a gray winter, it’s really nice to have an exhibit that’s so full of color.”