This becomes even clearer in his etchings.
Under the smooth surface one can see multiple layers of references, which reveal the complex production process. What appears at first sight to be pastose and expressionistic, turns out as a trompe l'oeil. He traditionally paints with oil on wood. Brown is usually described as a Mannerist, with works that are grotesquely and flamboyantly bombastic, always moving between beauty and ugliness, between life and death. The colours and structures dissolve as if the flowers were in a process of decay. “The Life Hereafter” adapted from a painting by Van Gogh shows a floral motif in its perishability. In place of eyes one sees dark, gaping holes.
Whereby the faces of the subjects appear distorted and sunk into itself. Both the theme as well as the scale of the presented sculptures and paintings, among which were portraits and still life, correspond to classical genres of occidental paintings. In early 2011 Brown’s Berlin gallerist Max Hetzler presented recent works of the British artist at a comprehensive solo exhibition. "Brown is usually described as a Mannerist." In his works Brown makes reference to artistic strategies from the renaissance to the present, adopts themes and pictures of both living artists such as Georg Baselitz or Howard Hodgkin, as well as works of great established artists of art history, such as Rembrandt or Dali, whom he uses as a foundation for his reinterpretation. Not in the sense of a previously seen shot with similar themes, but more like a déjà vu, that was shot by Far Wolf, an effect which is part of the concept of the artist, who was born in 1966 in Hexam. When looking at the work of Glenn Browns one is inevitably reminded of something previously seen.
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