IAN STEPHEN contemplates Geoff Uglow’s Highland journey.

IT’S VERY helpful when an artist tells you exactly what he’s up to. Geoff Uglow, winner of the Alastair Salvesen painting prize, is showing a series of paintings made by following the coastal route that the artist William Daniell too in a famous journey in 1814.

Examples of Daniell’s eries of acquatint etchings are on display in an adjacent room at the RSA so you can make the comparison. So is a series of prints Will Maclean made, using Daniell’s studies of Tanera Mor as a basis for his own prints which have a political purpose in the echo.

Uglow has produced a body of work which alternates large paintings with smaller ones. The particularities of the landscape, a headland or a man-made addition, such as Dunstaffnage Castle or Dunnet Head light, are usually more visible in the smaller scale works. The larger paintings at first give the impression of further allusions to Pollock and de Kooning, and the contrasts between the dominant colour-mixes in them convey mood as well as tone.

The artist puts it thus: “I equate the physical quality of the paint to a sea pushed and pulled through itself. When this activity is stopped, liquid becomes solid as if frozen.”

Paint is sculpted onto the linen so you stand back to take in the wrack and bracken and cafÈ latte. You could take that further. Raasay is not revealed by specific details but by treacle, double chocolate, raw demerara molasses, black rum and guano cream.

The larger scale works echo the titles used by Daniell, even to the spellings of the Gaelic names. Gealach combines Baltic blue and bitumen shades. Reodh hits the aquamarine and milk shake kombo. Aiste suggests meringue and mocha.

I know from my father that my Seanair (grandfather) used to quote “There is no new thing under the sun” as a guaranteed way of provoking fiery debate. It seems to me that this whole project also makes creative use of allusion. The RSA is thus the perfect setting and the presentation is expert.

There may not be 308 paintings on display to match the original series of drawings, but the artist’s stated concept has been realized. The departure into expressionism may be too much of a similar idea for some, but I think there is the right amount of work for the space and it also entices you next door to see the sources. The circle would be complete by visiting the landscapes afterwards to observe the true primary sources.

I was reminded of the excellent recent exhibition at Tate Britain where works by Turner were placed beside those who came before and those after. It was very revealing how closely the compositions followed each other. The perspective could change, or a bay or building transferred from one side to another but it became clear that there was no attempt to disguise the borrowing from one artist to another.

© Ian Stephen, 2010

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• Royal Scottish Academy

• Ian Stephen