Colin Middleton (1910-1983) ''The Red Floor'' Oil on Board, 61 x 45.75 cm (24 x 18'') Signed with monogram This painting seems to date from the mid-1960s, and is a most unusual example of Colin...

Colin Middleton (1910-1983) ''The Red Floor'' Oil on Board, 61 x 45.75 cm (24 x 18'') Signed with monogram This painting seems to date from the mid-1960s, and is a most unusual example of Colin Middleton's work. It demonstrates perfectly how he might experiment with a particular idea or a style of painting which, for whatever reason, would never be followed up with closely related works. The heavily prepared board creates a dense rhythmic surface that is typical and helps to indicate the period of the work, and the more abstract elements in the top right hand quarter of the painting also appear in some more abstract 'one-off' paintings of the same decade. The two figures in the painting might be the same girl, although the standing figure appears to be older; the connection is left with little explanation. Whatever the situation they do not seem to occupy the same pictorial space. Usually figures in Middleton's work, even when detached from each other or isolated within an image, do seem to occupy the same space and moment within the narrative of the painting. At a time when Middleton was abstracting the female form to a point at which it could equally be read as landscape, the decorative and rather sentimental treatment of the girl's head is remarkable, as is the bikini- and high heels-clad figure on the left. Middleton's women are usually fully clothed or completely unclothed. His figures are frequently topless, although there are drawings of women in underwear that date from the 1960s. This is more high street erotica than we are used to from Middleton. The red floorboards set up a shallow, lined perspective that looks forward to the surrealist-inspired Wilderness paintings of the following decade. We can see in the present painting the confusing inventiveness of Middleton's work, as well as the conviction and assurance with which he could experiment. There are elaborate design elements that are typical of Middleton; the continuation of the black line that sits at the end of the red floor through into the hair of the girl on the right, or the use of the abstract top right quarter to draw our attention to the fragmentation of the picture plane and the interplay of diagonals throughout the composition. Dicken Hall November 2005

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