Skyscraper

Roger Brown’s Skyscraper is filled with stories told in silhouette. In the high-rise itself, we spy couples at tables framed by green curtains. In the low row of businesses across the street, each with its own decorated façade, little intrigues also unfold. At the horizon line, mysterious gatherings flank spherical bushes. Brown was fascinated by how people interacted with architecture, as well as the little stories that unfolded around him in his neighborhood. His paintings seem like the film still from a 1940s movie, another one of Brown’s loves. The warm mysterious glow at the horizon derived from memories of childhood car trips: he had a fundamentalist Christian religious upbringing and when he saw the emanations of light around distant cities at night it made him wonder if the apocalypse was happening.