Neil Anthony Edwards played in the NBA, kept playing overseas for years, and now paints. His second solo show at Morton Contemporary Gallery, EVANESCENCE: WE ARE ALL STILL FADING, opens in Center City on November 14 and runs through December 6.
Neil Anthony Edwards Returns to Morton Contemporary
The new show follows his 2025 debut at the gallery, WE ARE ALL FADING, which the gallery says sold out. That exhibition stayed inside one era. This year Neil Anthony Edwards widens the frame across generations, with larger paintings and a broader range of color than last time.
A VIP opening reception takes place Saturday, November 14, from 5 to 8 p.m. at 115 S. 13th Street, and the artist plans to attend. Guests can RSVP through the opening reception page or by emailing Debbie@MortonContemporary.com or calling 215-805-1667.
Morton shows emerging and established artists from Philadelphia and elsewhere, and it has two locations in the city. It opened its spring season with The Weight of Time, paintings by Keith Andrews and fellow artists incarcerated at SCI Phoenix, one of the gallery shows in Philadelphia’s 2026 art calendar.
Neil Anthony Edwards Paints Generations of Style
The series starts with the tailored elegance of the 1910s, moves to the daring glamour of the 1920s, and arrives at the cool confidence of the 1960s. The gallery says each decade answers the one before it. Seen together, the clothes read less like snapshots and more like a family album.
Fashion is the language Neil Anthony Edwards works in, and the figures he paints have no faces. He says that is deliberate, because they are not one person. They are everyone. In his artist statement, time “is undefeated,” and the paintings are his argument for spending it well.
The statement behind the show reads like instructions for a good life: take the trip, fall in love, dance too long, forgive someone. Neil Anthony Edwards calls it a philosophy of happiness. Bodies change, the people we love change, and the things we own end up with someone else, so the paintings ask what to do with the time in between.
His method suits the idea. The gallery describes luminous, oversized figures built from layers of translucent color and unorthodox mark-making, with edges that soften as though the image were turning into a memory.
Neil Anthony Edwards Moves From the Court to the Studio
Edwards grew up with Caribbean parents and studied color theory and critical thinking at the High School for Art and Design. He then attended Stony Brook University, where, according to the release, he was drafted and went on to play for the Los Angeles Clippers.
After the NBA he played internationally in China, Lebanon, Venezuela and Italy. The gallery credits that travel for the cosmopolitan rhythm in his work, and says that after years on the court, the studio is where he found his home. For Neil Anthony Edwards, the faceless figures are also a way to keep the focus on shared experience rather than one sitter.
Neil Anthony Edwards Closes the Show With Rocky and LeBron
The last two paintings are the ones Philadelphia will talk about. One is Rocky Balboa, the underdog who made the Art Museum steps famous. The city’s Rocky statue spent part of this year inside the museum for an exhibition about the character, so the subject has not been far from view.
The other is LeBron James, the present-day bookend, painted by an artist who has competed at the highest level himself. LeBron is also a local name now, since he signed with the 76ers this summer.
Put the two side by side and the show makes its case without raising its voice. Legacy, the gallery says, is earned rather than handed down, round by round and season by season. Philadelphia has spent 2026 deciding what its monuments mean, and a former NBA player is adding two portraits to that argument.
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