The End of the World, Through Rose-Coloured Glasses

Brown's work is like a palimpsest of a copy, a further transformation of a subjectively selected cult of images. Brown finds one or two pictures, takes them apart, restructures them, draws a mood out of them and forms a new picture from the components.

"Brown is fascinated by how reproductions of paintings distort the qualities of their originals. Size, colour, surface texture and brushwork are elements by which original works are transformed from the familiar into the alien. Working from books or projecting reproductions onto a blank picture surface, Brown wildly embellishes his source material. Naturalistic colour becomes kitsch, figures are elongated or enlarged into the grotesque, while heavy impasto, although painstakingly copied, is rendered entirely flat. Often placing formal and aesthetic concerns over original subject matter and meaning, details from well-known works are isolated, manipulated, becoming subject matters themselves."