One-Way Conversations
Saffron Murray Browne’s playful and curious cast of subjects can never be caught off guard. Like their creator, a Bath UK-based oil-painter, the striped, sly figures inhabiting each canvas are eternally determined to confront their viewers. They make eye-contact, shapeshift, duplicate, and observe their own observers from the comfort of spaces washed in decisive fruity hues. Saffron Murray Browne’s work stays one step ahead of anyone who takes a look, locking passerby in hypnotizing one-way conversation and changing the rules before they’re even aware of them. While the artist frequents in and out of these semi-self-portraits, never be too sure of who or what you see. Murray Browne’s work is built to be tricky, and built to tangle the relationship between viewer and subject, like tangy treats for the eyes and for the truly clever at heart.
Part One: Who is Saffron Murray Browne?
Question One: Who are you?
My name is Saffron Murray Browne, and I am a painter. I grew up with my parents and four brothers in a small house in Bristol – a chaotic, happy buzz of artists and academics. I have been drawing nonstop since I was two, though there was a point when I wanted to become an author.
Question two: who are you as an artist?
As an artist I’m a planner – hours of research, drawing and composing goes into my paintings and very little is left to chance. I orchestrate a specific idea in order to lead a conversation between myself and the viewer. Of course, the great secret is that the viewer doesn’t get to say anything back, and so for a brief moment I have complete control over our relationship.
Question three: What kind of journey are you on?
I’m currently working out how to bring my work into the context of contemporary paintings. Often to the distress of tutors and teachers, I have always created what interests me, even if it hasn’t been fashionable. My lowest grades at school were always in art, but I just loved it, so I carried on. I am now at the point where I want to hold onto my own independent interests and find a space where people are as excited by these ideas as I am.
Question Four: What is on your artwork that we cannot see?
“The most important part of my work is always the viewer, which you will not be able to see unless you bring a mirror with you. All my work is about the relationship my painting has with the viewer, and with other artworks. My art can truly only exist once you are there looking at it and interpreting it.“
Question Five: What is something strange or interesting you keep in the studio/workspace?
I kept a broken mug in my studio for a while – I had bought it on holiday with an old boyfriend and when it was accidentally smashed it felt like a tangible end to that chapter of my life. There is something about the studio that makes you sentimental in this way – sometimes it feels like everything that occurs is a kind of performance art.
Part Two: Approaching Viewers
2020, oil on canvas,
90 x 62 cm. Private Collection.
Inspired by Lucian Freud’s ‘The Painter Surprised by an Admirer’, this painting questions the assumptions a viewer will hold when viewing a painting. Though the viewer may be expecting to approach the figure as one would another person, in fact what is being approached is a mirror image.
2020, oil on canvas,
180 x 130 cm.
This painting examines the theme of narcissism within self-portraiture. Artists often aim to express themselves through their work, even if they’ve gone to the trouble of acquiring a model. A beautiful nude reclines on my sofa but, sorry, you have to stare at me, the artist, because I say so. When I paint I open a relationship with the viewer, but it is one which the viewer has no influence.
2020, oil on paper,
50 x 64 cm
In this painting I looked at the position of the artist as a person, in relation to the value of their work. Often people are more interested in the artist than they are the artwork. It also captures how I felt during a rather funny and surreal time where I had nothing but photographs of myself all over my studio walls.
2020, oil on canvas,
50.5 x 40.5 cm
This painting features Modigliani’s ‘la Gitana e il Bambino’, and I used it to question what right I really had to position myself amongst the canon of artists. My image takes up the majority of the canvas while the well-respected painting is in the background.
Where/ How can Vacant Museum viewers see more of your work and where can they purchase it?
Please follow along with what I’m doing on my Instagram @saffronmurraybrowne
Additionally all my paintings are available to view at www.saffronmurraybrowne.com and you can email me at saffronmurraybrowne@gmail.com for prices and commissions
My virtual degree show is also live right now at www.noshowbsu.com