Mien [‘mEn]: air or bearing especially as expressive of attitude or personality.

There is a sense of size and of architectural in Matthew Browne’s paintings that establishes an impression of the monumental even when small. They are works of beauty, simplicity and spontaneity, his paintings “tell truths about colour.” (1)

Nothing is as it first appears within this body of work as Browne tests our perceptions. Straight lines are revealed as sloping or tilting, producing a sense of flux and change, of dislocation amongst order. Through spatial depth, volume, colour chromatics and composition, Browne generates a debate between minimalist abstraction and the principals of representation.

Browne manipulates colour and movement to evoke a heightened emotional content, repetition of line and form creating a musical rhythm that builds to a lyrical chorus when viewing his paintings en masse. “The essential, provocatively pious and distilled form of these interpretations, an asymmetrical form of the cross, provides the playground for the potentially emotive impact of colour and it is through these, inherently harmonious and discordant chromatic interactions, that I am seeking to communicate something of mortal transience.” (2)

Like Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko, Browne’s paintings contain a strong element of spiritual contemplation. His on-going fascination with the power and fragility of life forces is central. They “reflect my endeavours to make sense in visual terms of the human condition through both a cerebral and corporeal correspondence. These sensations rise through the physical plasticity of paint and the sensorial intensity of colour, to a visually metaphoric encounter.” (3)

1. T.J. McNamara, The New Zealand Herald, October 15, 2003
2. Matthew Browne, Artist statement, 2004
3. Ibid