July, although without day job commitments (an academic term-time contract means regular breaks and a nice long summer recess, of course), also seems to have passed without a great deal of painting being done, although a little has been processed.
By way of context, I must admit here to being a long-time admirer of the work of Euan Uglow and his commitment to a particular way of looking at and recording the visual world. Having invested-in the essential ‘Complete Paintings’ some years ago and frequently studied its contents since, I’d always had a certain fondness for Uglow’s representation of a Homepride ‘Fred the flour man’ figure, a familiar advertising icon remembered from childhood and youth.
Euan Uglow ‘Flour Man’ 1972-4
It transpires that Fred figures, smiling and friendly in appearance even with those ‘Clockwork Orange’ bowler hat cultural associations of a similar vintage, were manufactured for commercial purposes in a number of forms, some of such functional value to the baking process as flour sifters, water vessels, etc, and encountering a couple of these objects during a recent potter around a local antiques/vintage emporium presented the opportunity, too tempting to pass up with such art historical associations as they possess to those of us in the know, to invest in as potential grist to the painting mill.
Soon, the newly-homed pair of ‘Freds’ were in position, upon and against a ground of cardboard not unlike that of the Uglow painting in hue and tone, to pose for a pencil sketch that evolved into a rudimentary watercolour study of the form and reflective properties of (the surface appearance of) the plastic figures.
‘Flour men figures’ watercolour/30 x 21cm (sheet size)/July 2017
Thus completed, the progression into oil on canvas became the next stage of investigation into, as reportedly piqued the interest of Uglow, the challenge of depicting plastic, in this instance not one but two kinds, the larger object on the left having a more reflective surface quality than the more ‘silk-matt’ one to the right, with the result, more thinly and finely painted than the more physically textured technique applied to the ‘white pears’ and ‘woodscapes’ of the past year, presented below: an enjoyable challenge.
‘Mr Uglow and Me’ oil on canvas/20″ x 16″/July 2017
‘Mr Uglow and Me’ in context with the model figures, as the painting set-up.
