‘My new work engages with the language of visionary architecture—those ambitious, often unrealised structures that occupy the space between utopia and ruin. Through painting, I construct imagined forms that echo both abandoned modernist proposals and speculative models for an impossible future.
Works such as Tower (Blue) operate like architectural maquettes: compact, autonomous structures presented for consideration. These are not blueprints for inhabitable space, but painted proposals—visual studies in the aesthetics of mass, material, and modularity. They borrow from the logic of Brutalism and paper architecture yet remain unbuilt and unbuildable.
By combining illusionistic textures—rendered wood grain, Formica, concrete—with hard-edged geometric compositions, the paintings mimic the materials of construction while denying physical presence. The resulting forms feel monumental yet weightless, rational yet psychologically charged.
I’m interested in the afterlife of architecture—how idealised forms persist, fragment, or distort over time. Through the act of painting, I reassemble these fragments into new propositions: part monument, part failure, part dream.’
- the artist
Ross M Brown (b. 1986) lives and works near Edinburgh. He graduated from the MFA course at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in 2010. His work has received prizes including the NS Macfarlane and Linda Clark Nolan awards from the Royal Scottish Academy (2010, 2008) and has been shortlisted for Saatchi New Sensations and the Griffin Art Prize (2010, 2012). Recent exhibitions include the Scottish Landscape Awards at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh (2024), “Terra Incognita” (Solo Show), Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh (2017) and “Concrete Myths” (Solo Show), Lacey Contemporary Gallery, London (2015). Ross’ work features within the University of Dundee art collection and is owned by private collectors across the UK.