Temi Wynston Edun is a figurative painter living and working in Columbia, Maryland. Born in Ibadan, Nigeria, Edun’s practice centers on the figure as a site of psychological presence and restraint. His paintings engage silence, opacity, and interiority as structural elements rather than narrative devices.
Working primarily in oil stick on canvas, Edun employs a complex process of layering, scratching, and scraping to build intensely worked and mottled surfaces through compression, density, and erasure. Figures are often isolated within spare or abstract fields, where posture, gaze, and partial address register interior states without resolution. His work resists illustrative portraiture, favoring sustained looking and withheld meaning.
Edun earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts with honors from the University of Benin, Nigeria, in 1984. A large-scale metal sculpture completed during his studies remains installed on the university campus. After exhibiting in Benin City and Lagos, he relocated to the United States in 1987, where he worked and studied under Baltimore-based artist Larry “Poncho” Brown from 1990 to 1993.
His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including in London (2021) and Paris (2022), and has been featured in New American Paintings (Issue 166). Edun has completed commissions for cultural institutions, including the DC Black Repertory Company. He is a member of the Maryland Federation of Art and is actively engaged in arts education within his community.
Statement
My work centers on figurative painting as a site of restraint rather than declaration. I am interested in how silence operates as a structural condition, shaping posture, gaze, and presence without resolving into narrative or explanation. The figure remains central, but withheld, allowing meaning to gather without disclosure.
I work primarily with oil stick on canvas, using material density and erasure to slow the image and resist immediacy. Marks accumulate through compression rather than gesture, building mottled surfaces that feel held rather than expressive. I am less concerned with depicting identity than with examining how interior states register physically through stance, weight, and partial address.
Across my practice, figures often occupy moments of pause or suspension. Gesture remain incomplete, faces resist legibility, and space functions as both containment and threshold. These choices are intentional, allowing opacity to function as agency rather than refusal. Silence, in this sense, is not an absence but a field in which presence endures.
My paintings ask for sustained looking rather than interpretation. They are not illustrative or narrative-driven, but attentive to what remains unresolved where meaning is approached, felt, and held without being named.
curriculum vitae
b. 1964, Ibadan, Nigeria
Lives and works in Maryland, USA
EDUCATION
1984 BFA, University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria
EXHIBITIONS
2025
Simply Balcktastic, Sebrof-Forbes Cultural Art Center, Kensington MD
2024
28th Annual No Dead Artists International Juried Exhibition of Contemporary Art. Ferrara Showman Gallery, New Orleans LA
Night Swimming, Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston, MA
2022
Strokes of Genius, Circle Gallery, Annapolis, MD
Being Seen, TAG Gallery, Frederick, MD
My Profile, The Koppel Project, Mayfair, London UK
Human Faces, Las Laguna Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
AKAA, Cateau du Tempe, Paris France
2021
Cladogram, Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY
Springing Forward, Create Magazine, Virtual Exhibition
Good Bones, I Like Your Work, Virtual Exhibition
2020
Bethesda Painting Awards, Gallery B, Bethesda, MD
Woman 2020, Circle Gallery, Annapolis, MD
2018
African Kaleidoscope, Serengeti Gallery, Washington, DC
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Beth Rudin DeWoody, The Bunker Artspace, Palm Beach, Florida
Robert Hooks, Los Angeles CA
Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY
The Swahili Village, Washington, DC, New York, New Jersey
Dress Up, Basel, Switzerland
PUBLICATIONS AND AWARDS
New American Paintings -2023
LEDA Summit on Race and Inclusion; – Rehumanizing the Black Countenance – Artist Talk 2021
The Washington Post – October 2022
Bethesda Painting Awards – 2020