Southwold Sound

In his own words, Marc Brown says, “The sea has been a connecting thread that runs through generations of my family, which has its roots in East Anglia and Holland…Working in mixed media, my work aims to capture elements of sea and coastline found along my native North Sea coast. I often explore the juxtaposition of large open skies with strands of finely detailed horizons which often focuses on isolated buildings or objects. I am particularly drawn to the vast open stretches of our coastline that feature remote or derelict buildings or structures.” While this captures it ‘like it says on the tin’, it somehow isn’t enough for me. I’ve been wondering about what sort of soundscape would accompany a viewing of the online gallery of this Southwold-based painter. The vast open shorelines seem to call for an absence of noise, but silence is not what I hear. I needn’t have worried. Marc recently emailed me, along with his other supporters, to announce a new website, featuring this gallery of his work (http://www.marc-brown.com/). His home page details several influences. You’d expect visual artists to appear on the list. They do. There’s De Chirico, Edward Wadsworth and Jean-Pierre Roy. But it’s music I hear when I stare at Marc’s mixed media work. So, it doesn’t surprise me at all to see that most of his influences are musical and that most of these musical influences are electronica. Although I find Murcof, one of Marc’s influences, too minimalist and glitchy, the music has helped. I’m not yet able to say in any great detail, however, why I connect with Marc’s paintings. But I’ve been following his progress since my first visit to Southwold in 2005, when I discovered by accident the art gallery in which he was exhibiting his work. It’s very rare that a painting can arrest my attention so that I not only do a double-take, but do a backflip like a slinky spring. But one did. So much so that I felt I had to engage the guy at the desk in conversation. I had to offset the overwhelming feeling of breathless surprise I was experiencing. The last time I felt that was at the age of around nine, when, attending the local brine baths with school sports legend David Field, I jumped in what I thought was the shallow end of the pool, only to find it was the deep end. At the time, I could barely swim and had no explanation for what was happening. Survival was instinctual. The same was happening here, before this painting. In this mixed-media shoreline depiction of a boat, lying lopsided at low tide, I’d no idea that the earth could be so deep. I was drowning in the texture of sand. The guy minding the gallery turned out to be Marc Brown himself, a young, unassuming fellow who, then, of course, rendered me speechless through the revelation of his identity. I didn’t buy the painting, mistakenly valuing the presence of higher numbers on my bank statement more than the transcendental capacity of Marc’s work. Since then, I’ve contented myself with occasional visits to the gallery’s online site. But I had to go back. And 50 provided my excuse. Ever since I bought a small piece of Marc’s art, entitled Distant Mooring, on a trip to Southwold for that very purpose at the end of June, I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night, hearing and thinking about electronica. Until I’d plumbed Marc’s influences, it hadn’t occurred to me that the painting now facing me on the wall opposite our bed – the last thing I see before sleeping and the first thing upon waking – could be having such an effect. Now, as some of you will know, I’ve been writing about electronica these past few weeks. For me, there’s a sonic temporal loop that connects today with the summer of 1977 that had such a great effect on my life and direction. There is a definite link between hearing Showroom Dummies by Kraftwerk, I Feel Love by Donna Summer and Oxygene by Jean Michel Jarre back then and the music I’m hearing in my sleep after viewing Marc Brown’s Distant Mooring today. Yes, Marc, it’s very tempting to see your work backdropped by the articulate silences of Stars Of The Lid. But to me, you see, you hear, your art has a looped rhythm to it. So, when I look at Memory Horizon or Strange Moon, Orford Ness I get Axel Willner, otherwise known as The Field, working with Sound Of Light – Nordic Light Hotel or From Here We Go Sublime. Whatever, I think I’m saying that Marc Brown’s painting is a time machine, or at the very least, a catalyst for personal transcendence. I’m well aware that I’m making the kind of transformational connection that Andy Blade talks about at the end of his book, The Secret Life Of A Teenage Punk Rocker. Andy talks about his life as if it was like emerging from the other end of a tunnel in his 40s, having entered it as a 15 year-old in 1976. For Andy, the revelation takes him straight back to the moments just before he entered that tunnel. Back then, he didn’t recognise the revelations for what they were – the first stirrings of connection with the real, inner self. Then, he spent much of his life moving away from that inner self, just when he thought he was winning and his chance came to be king. And now, after many, many years and a long journey, here they are again, those self-same feelings of excitement and dawning awareness. Yet, what they really are is a return to self and the meaning of who you are as a person in this world. Except that this time, you now have the chance to live with and explore that self, instead of running away from it. The ebbing tide in the shorescape I’m now moving towards is on an internal horizon. Unlike before, there’s no rush to reach it, because I know it’s always there. I walk towards it every day. Through the Marc Brown window.

markgriffiths@idealconsulting.co.uk