born 12.2.43 died 20.3.92
Moving Target,
Volume 3 Issue 2
Ed Newstead was 49 when he died.
He was an artist and a film-maker and had recently won a BAFTA award for a documentary he directed for the Forestry Commission. You may wonder why he was working as a cycle courier?
Ed’s life was full of contradictions, but the one constant was his exceptional dedication as an artist. This had often led him to turn down work in the film industry where his uncompromising attitude would more often than not be in conflict with these who get themselves up as the arbiters of public taste and, indeed, intelligence. Where Ed worked in images, they would demand narrative and talking heads. Ed would periodically repudiate the industry for its crassness and spend months doing odd jobs like van-driving, decorating or working as a cycle courier, though he preferred cc-ing because at least it was good exercise.
Ed had 4 daughters- Sarah 30, Naomi 18, Amy 14 and Nadine 9. He loved them dearly and for their sake desperately wanted recognition as an artist, not only for the financial ease this would bring them but also as a vindication of his way of life. All of us who love him and were close to him wanted that success for him too, to see an end to his frustration and principally to see an end to his dreadful housing situation. He was constantly having to move from one short-life place to another.
Ed couldn't fit into any of the ‘systems’, especially the benefit system and always refused to claim or to work the public housing sector to his own advantage. In stead he braved it out for years, often squatting so as not to be beholden or dependent. A member of a local West End housing coop, be had been forced to move 9 times since 1985 as one after another of the short- lifes came up for rehabilitation. His last(semi-)permanent address was in Sandringham Flats on Charing X Rd., where he was much beloved by the old ladies whom he helped with their shopping and such-like.
As an artist, Ed had exhibited last November at the Metro Cinema and for the last 2 years running with the Covent Garden Artists. At their most recent show in January at Smith’s Gallery on Neal St. two of his pictures were stolen and, typically, he took it as a compliment! Ed’s courage was formidable. He put himself in situations where most would not last a minute, but over the years he had built up his faith in himself as an artist and it was this faith that he fell back on in the really hard times, that and the love of all those of us who loved him.
I know that faith and courage were with him at the end, in that terrible accident, as was all our love. He is sorely missed.
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