Born 1990 in Northampton, UK.
Pink Flowers is Ryan C. Brown’s second solo exhibition. His work has been included in group shows in Europe and Asia, including London, Hong Kong, Paris and Milan. He received his BA from Goldsmiths in 2012. He lives and works in Norwich, UK.
‘My paintings depict everyday spaces: alleyways, gardens, streets and public parks. Objects are rendered smooth, their textures relegated in order to give prominence to the interplay of light and form. I draw on impressions of charged and evocative atmospheres, often nebulous memories of places from my childhood.
Flowers often feature in my paintings: I like their variety and ubiquity, and how they can imbue an otherwise unpopulated scene with a characterful presence that is almost uncanny. What if, when we gaze at a flower, it is looking back at us? In this show I wanted to depict flowers that possessed some degree of contradiction: an organic lifelikeness, but also a bold, sculptural assertiveness that felt unnatural, manufactured, perhaps even intimidating. And rather than derive their forms from any specific variety, I wanted them to be entirely imaginary. I painted the same arrangement six times, and in a final composition, magnified one single flower in isolation. In each painting the light and weather is different, the mood of the setting has shifted, but I wanted the flowers to appear statuesque, impervious to the passing of time.
This show also features automotive imagery. I find cars compelling because they detach and distance us from the environment we are moving through, and yet they provoke a state of intense observation of the passing world. Travelling in a car elicits contemplation of both external and internal landscapes. In these paintings I wanted to explore the idea of a motionless car, a motif that suggests a paused journey, a moment of stillness and anticipation, even a sense of foreboding. Mark Fisher writes in The Weird and the Eerie, ‘the serenity that is often associated with the eerie—think of the phrase eerie calm—has to do with detachment from the urgencies of the everyday.’ It is these sites of detachment, their strangeness and vividness, that I wish to explore and portray.’
