A Room of Small Paintings

An Exhibition of Paintings

from Scotland, Cambridge and Cornwall

Artists Statement

GU: The works in this room of small paintings were made outside in the rural landscape, away from the studio.  Geographically they create a triangle from the north west of Scotland to the southeast of England and west, to Cornwall. Each one is painted in a single session and is a direct response to a landscape at a particular time of day.

There is a great deal of freedom when working directly from nature…you are discovering a new environment and reacting instinctively to it.  The place seen through the eye is the innocent starting point, as if pulling a sentence from a page of paragraphs, it is instantly somewhat comprehensible. But there is so much more to a finished painting than that.

The place where you stand has an extensive history. The painter himself brings a landscape of thoughts and emotion to the scenery… these things react with one another in unpredictable ways as the brush pushes and pulls paint across a flat surface. Eye and heart, cognition and the subconscious connect through the brush. Nature speaks and reveals a facet of its character. Then the character shifts. The character is always shifting.

The painter is walking a tightrope - balancing sight with insight and feeling.

There is ebb and flow between seeing and the painting.

I paint to share a glimpse of it.

The illusion in the paint is a glimpse.

Painting is a complete sensory experience.

Geoff Uglow

2016