Jeremy Uglow was born and raised in a small town in southeastern Wisconsin but now lives and works in Los Angeles. He earned his BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and his MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. His work has been exhibited across the country, including in Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. His practice includes, but is not limited to, painting, bookmaking, and framing.
What does it mean when we speak about self or the individual? My paintings are intertwined at the level of their conceptual content. While visually distinct, the base impetus of their creation is to speak on levels of social and personal construction. On one hand, they discuss means of individual construction of identity. There are components that come from environmental influence, both past and present, acting as forming factors, such as Religion, Art, politics, and pop-culture. As well as components that are self-driven, such as the decision to create a persona to present to the external world and disguise the individual in favor or an ulterior, exterior image. On the other hand, the paintings discuss factors that are intended to confuse the individual or society at large, building on a separation of subjective experience and its surroundings. One example is the use of resin to create an actual distance between the drawing on top and the painting below which, in turn, casts a shadow onto the underlying painting. Ultimately, the intention of my work is to explore how we are simultaneously influenced by, and the impact we have on our social environment.
In the creation of these paintings, I implement multiple styles to emphasize a point or create a separation of objects within the image. I borrow from art history to utilize a language that we already understood at some point in the lineage of culture, albeit a potentially in the form of pastiche, to speak to the contemporary. The intention is to simultaneously create the appearance of dissonance and a type of disguised relationship.