Ross Brown was born in 1986 and graduated from Dundee’s Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in 2010. Brown’s work focuses on landscapes in which wasteland and abandoned structures take on a filmic perspective and have a frail dystopian beauty.
In his painting Brown explores the experience of architecture. Wasteland is a recurring motif and reflects the tension between the state of flux within a landscape and a more constant sense of place. The passage of time is evident through cracked concrete and subsiding structures and this instability is further reflected through distortions as buildings are adopted for uses often contradictory to their initial intention. Each painting starts from a rigidly constructed one point perspective, then the image is built through the layering of techniques which rely on chance such as pouring, smearing and dripping. These chaotic processes are layered with more considered painterly responses mirroring the fragile equilibrium of architecture and nature within each site.
Brown was shortlisted for Saatchi/Channel 4 New Sensations 2010. He also received the N.S Macfarlane Charitable Trust Award at RSA Annual Exhibition 2010, Pittenweem Arts Festival Bursary Award 2010, RSA New Contemporaries Award for Degree Show, Rendezvous Gallery/Linda Clark Nolan Landscape award at the RSA Student Exhibition 2008 and a residency on the Isle of Lewis in Summer 2008. He has exhibited internationally at show such as Brave New World? at Bridge View Gallery, Aberdeen (2010), A Moskvitch in Havana at Tallinn Art Academy (Estonia, 2008) and Trans-Local Motion at Shanghai Biennial Student’s Exhibition (China, 2008). Brown’s work is also featured in the Catlin Guide 2011.