Glenn Brown

Glenn Brown, drawing from art history and popular culture, has developed an artistic style that defies classification, blending various periods and pictorial conventions through referencing, appropriation, and meticulous attention to detail. 

Glenn Brown's Art Style

Glenn Brown was born in 1966 in Hexham, Northumberland. During the 1980s, while studying art at Goldsmiths College in London, Brown grappled with the notion that painting had reached its conclusion, a sentiment acknowledged by artists, scholars, and critics of that era. Despite its historical baggage, he aimed to find a future for painting. To achieve this, he created illusionistic versions of the works of Frank Auerbach and Karel Appel. He portrayed their layered impasto using smoothly detailed two-dimensional brushstrokes.

Brown gathers images from various sources such as the internet, books, and printed materials, distorting and transforming them. During the 1990s, he produced several paintings inspired by science fiction literature, drawing from sci-fi illustrations of the 1970s and 1980s, and the apocalyptic imagery crafted by painter and illustrator John Martin. In these pieces, Brown melded expansive panoramic views with close-up perspectives, a technique he would later employ in his representations of the human body and flesh, evoking the styles of Salvador Dalí, Willem de Kooning, Chaim Soutine, and others.

In addition to his painting endeavors, Brown crafts sculptures by building up dense layers of oil paint onto structures or bronze casts. Since 2013, he has intensified his involvement with the tactile aspects of drawing, employing various types of lines, shading, and strokes to reinterpret the traditional practice of copying historical subjects as a means of learning. His drawings underscore the significance of the gesture, echoing the intricate lines found in sketches by Old Masters.

Many of Brown's titles allude to literature, film, or individuals. Although not directly linked to the content of his paintings, drawings, and sculptures, these titles assert a directness that mirrors Brown's subject matter. In doing so, he merges textual and visual references to update art history and perception.