Menacing skies set the stage for abandoned buildings in Lee Madgwick’s surreal painting — Colossal
Beneath an ominous sky, in a flat green park, Lee Madgwick’s silly architecture has an unsettling feel. His surreal paintings feature dilapidated facades and eerie bushes set against brooding dark gray skies – often with something strange going on.
In “Drift,” for example, bricks detach from the top of a boxy structure and float piece by piece into the sky, while “Fractured” completely defies gravity, with a hovering apartment building collapsing from below. Madgwick’s rural scenes pay homage to often-overlooked landscapes and developments, imbuing them with what he calls “an undercurrent of mischievous menace.”
Madgwick’s paintings are not without hints of dark humor, as in Echoes, in which half a building appears to have disappeared, as if swept away by a now-calm stream. Within the dilapidated ruins, a water slide was set up to take advantage of the height.
There are no visible figures in Madgwick’s work, although their presence can be felt in the graffiti on the walls or in the drawn curtains on the various windows. He told Colossal that his latest works continue to “depict the mysterious and melancholic otherworldliness of seemingly long-abandoned and isolated buildings under gloomy skies.”
The artist’s work will be on display at the Brian Sinfield Gallery in Burford, Oxfordshire, from 18 October to 4 November. For more information, visit Madgwick’s website and Instagram.
