I Paint Ghosts is the artistic practice of UK artist Simon Edwards, who creates figurative, humanist paintings exploring ghosts within familiar, everyday domestic settings. Each painting contributes to an imagined world where the supernatural meets the ordinary, and the mysterious becomes strangely comforting.

Working in a deliberately simple, naïve style, Edwards strips each figure back to its essential form, allowing the story and character of the ghost to take centre stage. By avoiding intricate detail, he leaves space for imagination, emotion, and individual interpretation. His ghosts are not bound by how we think ghosts should look; instead, they take on a freedom of form that feels instinctive, familiar, and almost childlike.

His work explores the curious balance between the haunting and the heartwarming, the eerie and the cosy, the unknown and the familiar. These are not simply figures from the past, but characters that invite us to reconsider our relationship with the unseen.

Ghosts are timeless. They seem rooted in the past, yet remain part of the world we inhabit today. Unproven and intangible, they exist somewhere between reality and imagination — mysterious, haunting, (and perhaps a little frightening) yet endlessly intriguing. Through the stories, rumours, and memories we share, ghosts continue to live in our collective consciousness.

Creating a world of ghosts. One painting at a time