SUDBURY.- This autumn, Gainsborough’s House presents a major exhibition of paintings by the internationally acclaimed contemporary artist, Glenn Brown CBE (b.1966).

Anatomy of Trees is the largest UK museum display of his work for more than 10 years. It includes around 14 paintings and 20 drawings made over the last decade, with key works such as Bikini, Doggerland and The Holy Bible. It includes his most recent works Living in the Sun, The Joy of Sex and Saint Bimbo.

Beginning with a deep admiration for historical art, Glenn Brown is renowned for incorporating art-historical references into his paintings and drawings. Alongside influences drawn from popular culture and contemporary imagery, Brown has developed a distinctive visual language of his own; one that challenges conventional approaches to representation.

Through a process of transformation and reinvention, Brown reinterprets the past to create paintings that evoke attraction and repulsion in equal measure, as well as a sense of the uncanny and the surreal. The result is art that is at once beautiful, unsettling, and deeply thought-provoking.

Suffolk is home both to Brown and some of Britain’s most important ancient woodlands. His rural house and studio are surrounded by 42-acres of rolling countryside and as a consequence, trees have become a significant motif in Brown’s recent work, providing an important point of reference – not just the title - for this exhibition.

In his paintings and drawings, Brown explores the tendency to personify trees, attributing to them distinct characters and human-like personalities, particularly in the case of ancient and veteran specimens. Gnarly, twisted oaks with irregular branches and deeply furrowed bark readily invite anthropomorphic interpretations, appearing almost animate in their presence and expression.

Brown is particularly fascinated by the painterly techniques of artists such as Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88), himself a masterful painter of trees and landscape. Gainsborough is celebrated for the expressive freedom of his brushwork and is perhaps one of the most painterly artists of the 18th century, particularly in his later works and Brown shares this fascination with paint itself. His paintings are meticulously executed through the careful application of thin, swirling brushstrokes that create smooth, almost flat surfaces. At the same time, they incorporate devices such as trompe-l'œil and anamorphism, celebrating the illusionistic possibilities of painting while simultaneously revealing its artifice. This tension lies at the heart of the mystery and fascination of Brown’s work.

While the main exhibition is being displayed in the gallery spaces, visitors will also encounter works installed throughout the historic House itself. Brown is particularly energised by the unique setting of Gainsborough’s House, regarding it as one of the great pilgrimage sites of British art. By placing contemporary works within this historic context, the exhibition creates a compelling dialogue between past and present, tradition and innovation.

Glenn Brown says: “The World we live in is always more complicated than it initially looks. Having lived in rural East Anglia most of my life and being an artist who loves to look at art (not all artists do), a walk in the woods is a particularly complex wonder. When I stop to admire a particular tree, I try to understand, through its peculiar morphology, the life it has lived, the experiences that have marked its form. It triggers memories of other similar trees I have encountered, both real and represented. A section of a Gainsborough painting, a drawing by John Chrome, a watercolour sketch by Constable, but it doesn't stop, an etching by Rembrandt, a painting by Abraham Bloomaert or a drawing by the great Jaques de Gheyn. I see the trees through the eyes of other artists. I feel the marks and lines and crevices that other hands have made. Pareidolia is unleashed and the tree is fully alive with ghosts of the past. The closer one looks the more layers of memory are revealed. A forest is a library of all manner of life, the dead and the yet to be created and born.”

Calvin Winner, Executive Director of Gainsborough’s House, says: “Glenn Brown is one of the most technically gifted and intellectually rigorous contemporary artists working today. He has a deep understanding of historical art across painting, drawing, sculpture and printmaking, which informs his practice as a painter, sculptor and draughtsman. His work draws on historical art, popular culture, and both historical and contemporary imagery in ways that are profound and capricious. Yet there is also a sense of shape-shifting and whimsy that challenges conventional approaches to representation. Gainsborough's House is proud to present this major exhibition of Brown's work.”