Hannah Brown describes herself unapologetically as an English landscape painter. Working within and against the omnipresent legacy of the English landscape tradition, she searches for quiet, often overlooked places with a particular type of beauty, and makes intimate oil paintings that at first appear archaic.
The paintings in The Unseen Landscape shown at PayneShurvell in 2012 were carefully mediated versions of our landscape. These are not the traditional views of vastness or the impression of scale that we expect. Brown’s focus is on the everyday landscape. Devoid of human presence they nonetheless examine the physical relationship between landscape and human experience.
Brown’s work is documentary like in its approach, but it is also a falsehood. We are shown only small sections of the area in mid-Devon she has been exploring for the last couple of years. The editing process increases in her studio as Brown empties the landscape of people and obvious signs of human life, buildings are removed, trees added, a river perhaps ignored. Light sources are swapped around, and blue skies are replaced by flat English greys.
In a genre traditionally dominated by men, Brown is interested in not only the historical nature of landscape painting but more importantly the legacy it has left behind. As our relationship to the countryside continues to gently shift, one element appears to remain constant; a lament for the loss of something that previously seemed to exist, albeit predominately in our imagination.
Solo exhibitions
2015 Solo exhibition, Cross Gallery, Dublin
2015 The Winter Girls, Milton Keynes Arts Centre
2012The Unseen Landscape, PayneShurvell, London
2012Time Hangs Heavy, The China Shop Gallery, Oxford
2009 Barts Gallery, London
2006 Gimpel Fils, London
2004 Life and Love, Great Eastern Hotel, London
Selected group exhibitions
2015 Arboretum, Royal West of England Academy
2012 John Moores Painting Prize 2012, Walker gallery, Liverpool
2012 Launch, A-Side B-Side, London
2011 The Threadneedle Prize, Mall Galleries, London
2011 Creekside Open 2011, Selected by Phyllida Barlow, APT Gallery, London
2011 Encounter (Two person show with Gary Colclough), Gallery Primo Alonso, London
2011 Modern British Sculpture, Gimpel Fils, London
2010 Legacy 1, L.I.U, London