GU: Light, a tree, the sun, the sea…A rose. There is a recurring appearance of specific figures from nature. There seems to be very little in my work that doesn’t include phenomena from the natural world - and with relation to my place in it, and how I steward it, how I affect it, and how it affects me.  It’s always there in one form or another.

There are recurring themes unifying most of the subjects I choose to study. These motifs have a shared character of never-ending, self-similar pattern - circularity perhaps - cycles and recursion.  Patterns of energy are found everywhere in the natural world, travelling through matter. That might be in the turning of the soil by the plough, bloom form and the spiralling petal count of a rose or the orbicular halo of light encircling a full moon. It’s in the branching tributaries of the tree and the amplitude and frequency of a wave…fractals - all dynamic systems within which we find order and controlled chaos.

In the spring and summer, I’m drawn to my rose garden and the garden in general.  Beyond the rose garden is the fruit orchard and then land falls away into a valley where a river runs through it, and it is all good material for painting.  On the other side of the valley are the fields I used to plough sometimes.  But because of the danger in the steepness of them, and for fear of a tractor rolling over, my father changed its use and we, my parents, my siblings and I planted a wood there instead.  The wood is the view I have from my studio windows and the colour and texture of it changes magnificently over the course of the year. The colour from afar represents a season.  Blackthorn blossom, the fern going over to a rust colour, larch in fresh green bud…

All the natural scenery around my studio holds important features for painting, but the rose continues to be a key emblem.  I paint my roses every year when they bloom from April through to November.  Even in December some still remain; their sweet colour hovering splendidly.  Less green at that time of year, more a background of silver and fawn, winter-woodiness, and maybe a vibrant little bloom singing operatically within it… The rose reconnects me to the season of richness.  To energy and growth.  It is a life-line connecting me back to the growing season; to the time when there were more hours of daylight…dark, winter weather can be frustrating.  Since light is such an important factor in my work, a lack of it has implications.  Perhaps that is why I feel the need to travel - like a plant bending towards the strongest light, I will move to the place where my eye can absorb the most. 

Light is the essence of life itself.  Without light there is nothing.  Nothing lives, nothing grows.  It allows us to see and experience the world that surrounds us by distinguishing its details.  It has a profound impact on us as human beings in terms of physiology, biology and of course psyche.  It is the main source of energy for all living organisms and provides the warmth of our atmosphere, and rhythm in our lives.  Light intensity and light duration can affect what my paintings become.  I don’t live in a built-up area - I am very aware of whether the moon is waxing or waning.  I naturally hearken to the voice of the sunrise and sunset - I am alert to the opening and closing of the day.  I know what the weather will be like in the morning depending on the sunset.  Sometimes you don’t even have to look up. You only have to observe the reflection of light around you at eye level come daybreak, to know how the atmosphere will change through the day…it can be felt on the skin as well as seen by the eye.

I choose to focus on subjects that are uplifting and inspiring - natural phenomena, human endeavour - things that delight, and inspire deep thought and creativity.  The world is full of chaos and suffering, but I won’t paint there.  I choose the remedy of beauty.

I like familiarity.  I always come back to things.  Loyalty means a great deal to me.  I like to build meaningful relationships, not only with people but also with nature and with the subjects and locations I use for painting.

There is only so much time in a life, and a life is an unquantifiable measurement.  It takes a great deal of time to explore a subject thoroughly through painting.  I welcome new experiences always but returning to the same subjects again and again works well in a practical sense.  I can reconnect quickly with a subject I have painted for a long time and that gives rise to a good flow of work.  There is familiarity but the details and how I might respond are never the same. 

Cezanne said something along the lines of, “…turn on your heel and you have a lifetime of work…”

I understood that when I was sixteen.  He also said “Painting from nature is not copying the object; its realising one’s sensations…”  

That statement is relevant to all my painting…but perhaps to the rose paintings especially.    

They are portraits of love in its many guises; descriptions of love.  It is an open and universal symbol, the rose, meaning that the endless combinations of colour and mark can be read by a viewer of any culture or background, and with personal interpretation. 

It is a single figure overflowing with historical symbolism.  It represents many things including, love, power, royalty, beauty, sensuality, femininity, romance, passion, purity, holiness, wisdom, joy, sacrifice, gratitude, grace, admiration, courage…even death and rebirth as viewed by the Romans…the list is seemingly endless.  It is a figure that has been so overloaded with meanings over the centuries that it has, I feel, wound up with no single locked-in meaning at all, and so I feel I can freely claim it for my own purposes. I do.  The figure of the rose will effortlessly assume any combination of colour I choose to give it and models well the swinging, lyrical, brush marks that I make, very well.   

I have worked on a great many rose paintings and will continue to do so.  I think the first rose paintings were more observational.  Over time I have become more interested in the emotion of them.

I have images in my mind always, of paintings I haven’t made yet.  If an idea, a feeling or a combination of colours keeps coming back to my attention, then I will need to paint it out.  And that painting will inform another, and another, again and again.  Possibilities for yet more paintings are endless.  The more work you make, the more painting opportunities present themselves.  The chain of thoughts for more rose paintings never seem to close down.  But I don’t believe that ideas make paintings.  It’s by the act of painting that works are made.  I’m not thinking paintings into being.  What stimulates the mind is the act of painting.  It’s a way of connecting all my senses.  By painting I can capture things that are elusive and turn them into something physical. 

Kiefer said that, “Art is longing.  You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will.”  I agree with the first part.  You long to see the beauty or passion or joy of something you’ve witnessed or experienced, rendered into a physical object that can be kept.  The memory and even the feeling can be preserved because of it.  But you never arrive.  You will keep on searching and painting until your last breath.  Painting will end for me one day, but I will never arrive. Painting is always becoming and never arriving.

 Geoff Uglow

Cornwall Studio 2021