We Are All Fading by Neil Anthony Edwards

“Though we are all fading, what remains is the mark we leave behind: our stories, our presence, and the way we touched the world. My art in this show seeks to preserve that essence before it slips away.” – Neil Anthony Edwards

From slam dunks to master strokes—former NBA basketball player Neil Anthony Edwards traded a basketball for a paintbrush, transforming his drive on the court into a powerful meditation on life’s fleeting moments and the legacies we leave behind. After being drafted to play for the Los Angeles Clippers and competing internationally in China, Lebanon, Venezuela, and Italy, Edwards shifted his focus to his first passion - art. Edwards brings the same discipline, focus, and kinetic energy to painting that once defined his basketball game. The result is work that feels immediate and lived-in: portraits that pulse with presence even as they contemplate the quiet fade of time.

In WE ARE ALL FADING, Edwards turns style into storytelling. Fashion isn’t decoration—it’s autobiography—telegraphing who we are, how we move through the world, and what we hope will endure. His luminous, larger-than-life figures inhabit a charged space between glamour and vulnerability, their surfaces layered with translucent color and unorthodox mark-making. Each canvas holds the now while acknowledging the inevitable: memory softens, edges blur, yet essence remains.

Edwards’ rich background from his Caribbean parents, sportsmanship, artistic prowess, and years of global travel thread through his artwork as a cosmopolitan cadence. Edwards attended High School for Art and Design where he studied color theory, critical thinking, and artistic techniques, and later attended Stony Brook University where he would go on to be drafted and become a professional basketball player in the NBA playing for the Los Angeles Clippers. Following his career in the NBA, Edwards began traveling overseas to play international basketball in countries such as China, Lebanon, Venezuela, and Italy, however after years on the court, Edwards found his ultimate home and solace back in his art studio. =

The paintings of this exhibition speak across cultures and eras, insisting that art can both document and dream: a record of who we’ve been and an invitation to imagine who we might still become. In WE ARE ALL FADING, legacy is not marble and monuments, but rather it is presence—the stories we tell through what we wear, the choices we make, and the way we touch the world on our way through it.