Colin Brown’s distinctive use of collage combined with oils, acrylics and glazes, creates work of extraordinary balance and free association. Brown’s ‘joy in collage’, in finding and using materials that might otherwise be discarded or forgotten, celebrates regeneration and the Dadaist ideal of looking at society in fragments. Images from music, cinema, scientific illustration, sport and art history are powerful triggers of memory and feeling in his work.

 

Brown’s paintings display a rich blending of cultures, ancient and modern, high and low, with cumulative human marks in urban spaces a rich seam of inspiration. In his latest work, Brown has responded to the work of 18th Century Belgian botanical artist Pierre-Joseph Redouté, placing individual flowers at the centre of each composition and reimagining an age of consumerism in the process.

 

Colin Brown (b1962) graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art with B.A. Honours Degree in Fine Art (Painting) and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Fine Art (Painting). He was the recipient of an RSA John Kinross Scholarship to study in Florence (1987) and the Pollock-Krasner Award from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York (1996). He has worked extensively in Europe, including four years in Düsseldorf and now lives in the northeast of Scotland.

 

Over the past 30 years Brown has established an international reputation, with exhibitions throughout the UK, Europe and America. His work is represented in private collections in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, U.S.A., New Zealand, Japan and in Public Collections including the Highland Regional Council, Scotland, Norddeutsche Landesbank, Hanover, Germany, Grampian Arts Trust, Scotland and the Hibernian Football Club, Edinburgh.