Weekend Gallery: Press Release

Gordon Robin Brown: Painting
6 June - 13 July

Gordon Robin Brown’s homepage is headed by a review from the Glasgow Herald that describes his work as “vast paintings combining fish and fowl, flora and fauna, in bright colours, as though Hieronymus Bosch was designing sets for Balamory.'' This is no flippant comparison as Brown delivers on the promise, with gleeful disorder and charming anarchy.

Ambiguous narratives are illustrated by a jamboree of animals and humans with strangely blank expressions. We are the voyeurs as oblique masquerades unfold. There is a sense that we should not be watching as the cast is naively unaware that their activity has any real consequence to the world beyond.

In the larger canvases there is no landscape to ground us in reality – virtual or real - but large areas of solid colour. Not unlike, Gary Hume’s works these flat plains of rich hue draw us in. Depth is achieved without any device to indicated perspective. Indeed perspective is not a consideration in these paintings and scale loses relativity as these assemblies seem to congregate in a strange vacuum.

Brown’s intent is to elicit a visual exuberance from this economical, stylised painting. But these are not conceptualized works. They are the result of an instinctive chain of ideas and action. “My work comes about through ‘doing’ essentially. I will draw and draw overlapping ideas sometimes unrelated, but then crucially edit - deleting and reworking until an image and narrative I feel satisfied with emerges.”

Although somewhat less violent, these tableaus evoke a similar mix of emotions as the large drawings by self-taught artist Henry Dargers – confusion, shock, charm and engagement. And it is perhaps because these works are a unique expression of a personal psyche that they draw more parallels with outsider and visionary art than the slick minimalism of Hurst. They are a spectacle of invigorating absurdity.

“My work finds itself within the boundaries of surrealism, dreams and fairytales. Depicting a strange, compromised paradise where both human and animal characters are depicted in private, folkloric ensembles against vast colour expanses.”

The Scotttish Arts Council awarded Gordon Brown a grant to enable him to develop work for this exhibition.