Statement for John Uzzell Edwards at The Millennium Exhibition - Tenby
by Phil George

The Welsh are good storytellers. Stories are the cement of our communitarian society. And in life, John Uzzell Edwards is a marvellous storyteller - warm, perpetually surprised and funny. But this incandescent show is a revolt against story, against narrative. John's passion is form - the rhythm of forms sweeping, coaxing and tugging the eye around the painted image. He has had this passion for many years. Even when the paintings were more representational - the carnival bands, choirs and posed gripings of Valleys prosperity and decline - he was looking for the pulse and for the energy and conviction but for John it is the reason his paintings exist.

For some years now John's work has been driven by an exploration of Celtic forms. The horses, warriors, shields, crosses and woven knots of those Celtic traditions are blazoned across the walls of this gallery. The colours are staggering, heraldic colours declaring their freedom from the tones of the natural world. But this show is not a reworking of a tradition and its ambitions are light years away from a concern with decoration. The vision, the engagement, the sensibility are thoroughly contemporary. John Uzzell Edwards has taken some indigenous forms and released a new energy in them.

We all have favourites in exhibitions. Mine is Pure Painting IV where the Celtic cross motif no longer quarters the circle but breaks out of it, breaking the circle into the ventricles of a heart. The arcs and curves within the heart are allowed to swing the whole painting - it has the feeling of more than the connectedness that John seeks, it is in perpetual movement. And the colours pull and move with and against each other. Purples and muted greens tug against the dominant primaries, the yellows and bright blues. This Pure Painting series is teeming with life. Look at the way the four bicycle wheels of Pure Painting I are broken by ellipses or see the strange way that those wheels have the texture of old walls in a painting whose centre explodes with colour.

The same energies and formal urgency can be seen in other paintings: the circular, everlasting knot; the horse and warrior paintings inspired by S.S. Thomas (Uzzell Edwards' Battle of San Romano'); and the mysterious pinks and reds of Owain Glyndwr as Magus in Shakespeare's Henry IV. And the trick of these works is their lack of portentousness. They are fertile, stimulating and also playful - the hobby horse of the mari Llwyd can co-exist with the bulging head of a battle horse.

A last thought. Robert McKee has rightly warned against chattering interpretations of these works. In similar vein, I began by opposing them to narrative, to social meanings. And yet... As you gaze at these paintings, you see many instances where the plane shifts, where the big picture reveals a moment of innerness. In some local detail of texture and colour, we see worlds beyond. And in some strange way, they feel like our contemporary worlds, our cityscapes, our places of the heart. This remarkable artist is no formal puritan. The fierce concentration of vision is driven by delight and discovery.

Phil George is the Head of Arts, Music and Features, B.B.C Wales