Sinister Skies Set the Scene for Derelict Buildings in Lee Madgwick’s Surreal Paintings

Beneath ominous skies and set within flat, green parkland, Lee Madgwick’s folly-like buildings strike an unsettling note. His surreal paintings feature dilapidated facades and uncanny shrubbery against cloudy, deep gray skies—usually with something just a little strange going on.

In “Drift,” for example, bricks dislodge from the top of a boxy structure and float into the sky one by one, and “Fracture” defies gravity altogether with a hovering apartment tower that crumbles from below. Madgwick’s rural scenes nod to landscapes and developments that are often overlooked, imbuing them with what he describes as “an undercurrent of mischievous menace.”

a painting by Lee Madgwick of a partly destroyed building next to a stream under a gray sky
“Echoes”

Madgwick’s paintings aren’t without hints of dark humor, like in “Echoes,” in which half a building appears to be missing, as if washed away in a now-calm stream. Inside the ragged remains, a waterslide makes use of the height.

People are nowhere to be seen in Madgwick’s compositions, although their presence is felt in the graffiti left on walls or curtains drawn in various windows. His latest body of work continues “to portray that mysterious and melancholic otherworldliness of seemingly long abandoned and isolated buildings under heavy skies,” he tells Colossal.

The artist’s work will be on view at Brian Sinfield Gallery in Burford, Oxfordshire, from October 18 to November 4. Find more on Madgwick’s website and Instagram.

a painting by Lee Madgwick of a windmill on a green lawn against a gray sky
“Badlands”
a painting by Lee Madgwick of a brick building on a green lawn, with a top that appears to be disintegrating and floating away against a gray sky
“Drift”
a painting by Lee Madgwick of a dilapidated building with greenery growing out of the top of it, situated on a green lawn below a dark, gray sky
“Boom!”
a painting by Lee Madgwick of a neoclassical building facade on a green lawn, under a gray sky
“Empire”
a painting by Lee Madgwick of a building next to skinny trees, on a green lawn, under a gray sky
“Evanescence”
a painting by Lee Madgwick of a modernist building on a green lawn under a dark, cloudy sky
“Hope”

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Sinister Skies Set the Scene for Derelict Buildings in Lee Madgwick’s Surreal Paintings appeared first on Colossal.

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