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John Uzzell Edwards

John Uzzell Edwards was born in Deri in the Rhymney Valley, South Wales in 1937.
He was awarded the Granada Arts Fellowship by York University in 1966 and in
1968 received the Prix de Rome at the British School in Rome.  In 1986
he was Artist in Residence at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea and was
made an honorary member of York University.

In 1988 he was granted an Arts Council of Wales Travel scholarship to study
Celtic art in Europe, and has twice been awarded the main painting prize at
the National Eisteddfod of Wales. He formed a new group of Welsh painters ;
Ysbryd/Spirit Wales in 1998.

In 1999 he exhibited at the Humphries Gallery, San Francisco; in 2000 he had
the Millennium exhibition on at Tenby Museum and Art gallery; in 2001 at the
Mall Gallery, London, at the National Museum and Gallery of Wales, Cardiff in
2003, and in 2004 at MOMA, Y Tabernacl, Machynllyth.

For the last three years he has shown at the Euro-Celtic exhibition at L’Orient,
Brittany. He has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally and his
work is represented in many public and private collections in the United Kingdom
and abroad.  He lives and works near Swansea, South Wales. 



John Uzzell Edwards’ work is to do with Pure Painting, not picture making,
and is driven by an exploration of Celtic forms.  He is inspired by Celtic
crosses and stone inscriptions, mediaeval tiles, and the lettering and carpet
pages of holy books and ancient manuscripts.



The main inspiration for the very recent paintings has come from the St. Teilo’s
Bible, which was made in Wales after the time of the Lindisfarne Bible and before
the Book of  Kells.

‘From 1985
I was awarded a Welsh Arts Council Travel Grant to study ’Standing Stones’ throughout
Europe, I have worked on a series of paintings and drawings which are totally
connected. The first standing stone I painted was the ‘Llywel Stone’ which is
now in the British Museum. This was followed by a series of paintings based
on the imagery from the ‘Standing Stones’ throughout Wales. The imagery and
the feelings expressed in these paintings seemed to relate to the poetry of
RS Thomas, and particularly the poem ‘Welsh landscape’ and the lines -

To live
in Wales is to be conscious

At dusk of the spilled blood

That went to the making of the wild sky

RS Thomas

Early in 1996
I was commissioned by the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford upon Avon, to paint
any Shakespearean charcter. I chose Owain Glyndwr and the statement by Glyndwr
from ‘King Henry IV’ -

When I was born the earth did shake

The two quotations
above are often written directly on the paintings.

In August 1997 I visited Neath Abbey and there in the large hall I found a most
wonderful medieval tiled floor from the 12th Century; the subject matter was
hunting and jousting. The ‘jousting’ imagery seemed to relate to a previous
‘Warrior’ series, and has inspired a whole new series of works. They appear
to be all about ‘Painting’ and not ‘Picture Making’. They seem to relate to
manuscripts I have studied in Ireland and Wales. They seem to weave and meander
like a story from the ‘Mabinogion’, a Welsh knot, or a piece of penllion music.

Statement taken from the catalogue of The Millennium Exhibition at
the Tenby Museum.’

‘FORWARD’ Robert McKee on John Uzzell Edwards

The Hindu
symbol for the human mind is the jabbering monkey, that cerebral Pandemonium
only intense meditation can silence. For while the incessant rattling of self-debate,
of repetitious mental tasks, of flitting memory and anticipation gets us through
our days, this moil also builds an impenetrable frtress against deep experience.
As long as the mind is whirling away, no substantive change can occur within
us. The joy of art, therefore, is its power to silence the monkey. When in the
grip of compelling work we slip into a spontaneous meditation. Then, in the
quiet of aesthetic contemplation, we are filled with the artist’s vision, our
humanity is illuminated, our being renewed.

Thus I have
a simple test that tells me whether or not a painting works, if, when I step
up to a canvas, I hear my mind spewing thoughts such as “Clever juxtaposition
of red against blue,” “Interesting solution to that problem in the upper left,”
“That image…yes, I remember, it’s the symbol for -”, I know in a flash that
this piece does not work. It has amplified the chatter. If, however, my mind
falls silent as my eye travels around the surface for five, ten minutes or more
with no analysis, no musing, no questioning, only pure sensory focus inside
a perfect stillness of thought, then, as I finally look away, sensing a deep
resonation of aesthetic experience, I know that this painting works. It is not
merely decorative; it is expressive. It has silenced the chatter in my mind
and caused a profound shift within such that I am not the same person I was
just moments ago.

The
paintings of John Uzzell Edwards have this power. I first experienced his magic
a decade ago in Cardiff’s West Wharf gallery. There were other painters on exhibit
that day, solid professional artists, but the Uzzell Edwards canvasses drew
me like a Siren’s song. In this period his works were figurative… muscular
outlines and vigorous matrixes created through a layering of oils, brush strokes
and pallet knife, that generated the most amazing textures and colour combinations
I had ever seen. I stood, I don’t know how long, in wordless fascination. When
at last I stepped back, I knew I wanted these paintings in my life, for if they
had such power at first viewing, surely their force would grow day after day,
year after year to give me endless, bottomless pleasure. Indeed, the six ‘Uzzell
Edwards’ I’ve collected to date have done all that and more.

Robert
McKee is a screen guru who lectures in ‘story structure’ to auditoriums worldwide.
His bestselling bible on the principles of screenwriting ‘Story’ was published
in 1998.