Euan Uglow and Science, Abbots Hall Cumbria

Apparently straightforward, this is on the contrary an esoteric art. He has said it himself: the notion of representational veracity is a nonsense to him. He is interested in something more hermeneutic. In front of the nudes, the sensation is of rest (“harmony”) and creamy skin tones. His first concern is with surface pattern and to locate the objects in relation to the canvas edge. This is the first theme related to containment. Huge effort evidently goes into laying out the proportions. He talks about the paintings as an “idea” and the idea is a formal outlet. The canvas sizes are finely proportioned and this is where he will usually start from, so in this way he sets the bounds of his territory. Within these bounds of the canvas edge, the image is held in a cat’s cradle of proportion. This is both literally the case but also part of the signature of the paintings. Through his use of markings or measures he indicates that measurement is one of the main subjects of the work. He is not much interested in perceptual depth or perspective: except for one early work in the show, the rest have no particular concerns with marking out space, except over a very brief span across the width of a body. So the experience is indeed both restful and sensual. A sense of being held by proportion while looking.

So one of the striking characteristics of his apparent working method is to take enormous pains to locate the subject and control the perception precisely sitting after sitting, by the use of plumb lines, marks, constructions etc. The aim seems to be to control the visual stimulus remarkably tightly, and then further in the looking he controls himself precisely also, through the use of elaborate head rests, plumb lines, vision holes etc. The light is more difficult to control, but he makes as much effort as he can to do this and sittings can be delayed week after week if the light changes. So he sets up for himself a remarkably unchanging percept and then through an apparently rigorous process of measurement and visual aids, controls further the mechanics of his looking. Thus held and regulated, he is able to experience colour, particularly light on flesh, which he locates with soft, lovingly articulated clean colour. The modulation of colour is far from simply representational. It is simplified down into broken planes, which essentially use the early vocabulary of the Euston Road School, flowering into hotter and more expressive colour as his career proceeds. Here is the delight that he often talks about, even insists on, in his own responses. It is as if the various forms of control and measurement worked out in the painting process are like an Ariadne’s web, leading him to a point where he is able, safely, to see. This could explain why his “measurement marks” become more and more an almost decorative feature of the work and not merely a record of process. At one level they are a record of the process of construction, representing in the visual language of the paint something about the aesthetics of the process, similarly as do the paint dribbles in abstract expressionism. They also however insist on the safety of the perception as well as the rigorous measurement. In this sense I do think that Uglow can truly claim an aesthetic of science. Most art that does this is either hyperbole or charlatanism; but Uglow really does use measurement in the same way that science uses measurement, as a guarantor of value and a facilitator of clear sightedness.

Kendal
July 2011