The premise of Miss Venne is simple: a nude face-on to the viewer holding a white towel across her lap is seated against the plain wall of a studio. Uglow subjects the body in space to a critical examination, forensic in its rigour, pursuing problematics of perspective, of light, of surface, of colour and form. Distilling figurative painting to its essence, Uglow considers the fundamental proposition of the corporeality of the body and its relationship to its spatial environment. Uglow scrutinises the reciprocity between body and space, between solidity and void, the tangible and the abstract. The model is bathed in light falling from the left, her flesh luminous in a manner that suggests not just natural lighting but blood pumping through living flesh. Anecdotes of Uglow waiting for a model to hold a pose for forty-five minutes so that her calves were the exact shade of pink explain the immense range of colours across the nude. Blue, green, and pink hues suggest mottled light on her chest whilst red hands and red knees hint at the cold of the studio. The pinky whiteness of the top of her thighs modulates to a warmer peach below, perhaps as blood sinks whilst she sits. Miss Venne’s flesh seems not raw but certainly quite brutally exposed; the delicacy of human skin is bared to Uglow’s unforgiving vision. Anatomical structure is suggested primarily through colour; the literal density of paint seen in the mid-1950s nudes is replaced by smoothly tempered surfaces and a subtle yet luminous colour palette. The terse solidity of the model’s torso anchors the body whilst the projection of limbs and the curve of her back are created through modulations of colour – contours are eliminated. The sculptural weight of the model engenders and defines believable space around her; as Martin Golding wrote of the work, “The space is in effect created by the body.” With ferocious intensity of perception, Uglow reveals an extraordinary interplay between the translucency of flesh, the sculptural solidity of the body, and its supremacy over the space of the studio.