Press
"...Ross Brown’s ‘Glass House’ reminded me of J G Ballard’s 'The Drowned World' somehow, with jungle-like foliage seeming to spread in from the outside of the canvas..."
Griffin Art Prize review by Emily Speed, a-n Reviews Unedited, December 2012
"Livingston, Scotland’s fourth designated New Town is the venue for the two-man exhibition Utopia in Retrospect. Situated between Glasgow and Edinburgh and celebrating it’s 50th year in 2012, Livingston is an appropriate place to consider utopian ideals. Born in the mid-twentieth century when architects and town planners promised new and better designs for living “Make it in Livingston” is the slogan for this particular town...
The Hacienda is a seductive image, which both invites and holds at a distance. Is this the infamous Manchester dance club once jam-packed full of 24-hour party people during the 1990s? If so, then Ross M Brown’s evocation of the present emptiness of this space has a melancholy similar to that of the 18th-century French romantic painter Jean Watteau’s painting Pilgrimage to Cythera . In the painting Watteau pictures a group of young people embarking on a trip to Cythera, the mythical island of love – a destination which is impossible to arrive at."
an Magazine, p31, June 2012
Cathy Bell's full review of 'Utopia in Retrospect' on "a-n Magazine's"- Reviews Unedited
Artists to watch in 2011 - The Independent, 12/01/2011
Featured in the Catlin Guide 2011
London Evening Standard, 15/10/2010
The Sunday Times, 23/05/2010
The Herald - Arts Supplement 08/05/2010
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"...While Livingstone's paintings were deeply intuitive, those of Duncan of Jordanstone graduate Ross Brown were of a far more conceptual nature. His romantic landscapes of derelict urban wastelands were cut through with scratchy graffiti-like markings, leaving clear only their cool reflections in puddles of water. Loch House, an unpeopled building site, was a mass of interconnecting timbers, all pointing towards a blank end wall that refused to become a point of focus. There was plenty food for thought in these paintings, but also a poised and unexpected beauty."
RSA New Contemporaries review, 'an' magazine, April 2009
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"...Ross Brown graduated with a first class honours from Dundee's Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art last year. He received the Linda Clark Nolan/Rendezvous Gallery Landscape Award at the last ever RSA student exhibition in 2008. As part of that prize, he took up a residency on the Isle of Lewis last summer. Brown's work for his degree show focused on landscape which is littered with wasteland and abandoned structures: “The wasteland is used within my work as a vehicle reflecting the difficulty associated with establishing a sense of place within a landscape that is in a constant state of flux”. Brown's paintings are almost filmic in their perspective, conjuring up a dystopian fragile beauty.”
- 'Homes and Interiors Scotland' magazine Jan/Feb 2009
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Degree Show Review - The Scotsman
Degree Show Review - The Herald
Griffin Art Prize review by Emily Speed, a-n Reviews Unedited, December 2012
"Livingston, Scotland’s fourth designated New Town is the venue for the two-man exhibition Utopia in Retrospect. Situated between Glasgow and Edinburgh and celebrating it’s 50th year in 2012, Livingston is an appropriate place to consider utopian ideals. Born in the mid-twentieth century when architects and town planners promised new and better designs for living “Make it in Livingston” is the slogan for this particular town...
The Hacienda is a seductive image, which both invites and holds at a distance. Is this the infamous Manchester dance club once jam-packed full of 24-hour party people during the 1990s? If so, then Ross M Brown’s evocation of the present emptiness of this space has a melancholy similar to that of the 18th-century French romantic painter Jean Watteau’s painting Pilgrimage to Cythera . In the painting Watteau pictures a group of young people embarking on a trip to Cythera, the mythical island of love – a destination which is impossible to arrive at."
an Magazine, p31, June 2012
Cathy Bell's full review of 'Utopia in Retrospect' on "a-n Magazine's"- Reviews Unedited
Artists to watch in 2011 - The Independent, 12/01/2011
Featured in the Catlin Guide 2011
London Evening Standard, 15/10/2010
The Sunday Times, 23/05/2010
The Herald - Arts Supplement 08/05/2010
----------------------------------------------------------
"...While Livingstone's paintings were deeply intuitive, those of Duncan of Jordanstone graduate Ross Brown were of a far more conceptual nature. His romantic landscapes of derelict urban wastelands were cut through with scratchy graffiti-like markings, leaving clear only their cool reflections in puddles of water. Loch House, an unpeopled building site, was a mass of interconnecting timbers, all pointing towards a blank end wall that refused to become a point of focus. There was plenty food for thought in these paintings, but also a poised and unexpected beauty."
RSA New Contemporaries review, 'an' magazine, April 2009
----------------------------------------------------------
"...Ross Brown graduated with a first class honours from Dundee's Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art last year. He received the Linda Clark Nolan/Rendezvous Gallery Landscape Award at the last ever RSA student exhibition in 2008. As part of that prize, he took up a residency on the Isle of Lewis last summer. Brown's work for his degree show focused on landscape which is littered with wasteland and abandoned structures: “The wasteland is used within my work as a vehicle reflecting the difficulty associated with establishing a sense of place within a landscape that is in a constant state of flux”. Brown's paintings are almost filmic in their perspective, conjuring up a dystopian fragile beauty.”
- 'Homes and Interiors Scotland' magazine Jan/Feb 2009
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Degree Show Review - The Scotsman
Degree Show Review - The Herald