Ryan Browning 

BIO

Born in Houston, Texas in 1981, Browning now lives in Doha, Qatar. His paintings have a way of simplifying imagery to a cartoonish state without losing the specificity of the objects he is portraying. Often his imaginary spaces are rendered without figures, but hint at their presence, as if they have just walked out of frame. His work has been written about in The New York Times, ARTnews, ArtMaze Magazine, Art F City, and others. He has exhibited at ADA Gallery (Richmond, VA), Mother Gallery (Beacon, NY), Resort Baltimore (Baltimore, MD), Mulherin Pollard (NYC), Allegra LaViola (NYC), VOLTA NY (NYC), The Fire Station Museum (Doha, Qatar), Menage Gallery (St. Petersburg, RU), and others. He is represented by ADA Gallery and is an Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My paintings and sculptures depict cartoonish objects and figurative elements in flattened and sometimes stage-like environments. I use a broad variety of media, including oils, gouache, 3D printed plastics, ceramics, fiber, found objects, and others, to produce artworks that I imagine moving in and out of two and three dimensional space. Through my work, I explore collage-like layered realities, virtuality and role play, world building, and the charismatic power of objects.

Interview with Ryan Browning

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you became interested in becoming an artist? Who or what were some of your most important early influences?

I’m from the US - I grew up in suburban Houston in the 80s and 90s as a latchkey kid, and had a pop-media fascination that I think was pretty typical for the time. I liked to draw. I was very interested in anything that transported me out of the boredom of being home alone, like cartoons (especially the ones with a toy line), video games, MTV - there was so much consumer junk to buy into and I loved it. I gravitated hard toward anything that opened up the possibility of participation or authorship in creating your own world, like the role playing game Dungeons and Dragons. I eventually got a degree in art history, but around that time decided for good that I’d prefer to focus on being creatively engaged rather than pursue a scholarly path. I’ve always had a strong desire to build and make things in general, but I first truly learned to love painting after seeing work by Matthias Weischer and Neo Rauch in person. I’d been interested in pictures and illustration growing up, but began to see painting and art-making as a much more multi-dimensional game around the early 2000s when I started to see more of it in real space. I liked artwork that inspired the same inviting/participatory feelings I had towards pop media when I was younger - work that felt transportive and suggested an alternate or more textural reality.

Where are you currently based and what initially attracted you to working in this place? Are there any aspects of this specific location or community that have inspired aspects of your work?

I live in Doha, Qatar. I don’t think it’s the kind of place you choose to live unless you’re from here, or you work here, and I happen to work here as a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University (no offense intended - it’s just a small place). There’s a bright, sunny, geometrically beige quality to the world here, and that’s inspired some ideas about depth and flatness of space for me. The other half of the world here is the sky and emptiness, and I believe the minimal complexity of the desert allows for more focus on the colors and presence of the sky, which has also entered my work. I think both of those play a strong role in the way I think of and form space in my paintings.

Can you describe your studio space? What are some of the most crucial aspects of a studio that make it functional? Do any of these specific aspects directly affect your work?

My studio space is… not ideal. I dream of having a more practical, spacious studio with good light. Mine is a compromise that’s partly a consequence of where I live and the hours I have to work, so it’s at home in a spare room. Since I work in a variety of media, storage efficiency and ready access to materials and tools are key, and so my studio has become a dense tetris compound of cubic storage, folding tables, and a couple of precious walls. For now it works, but the need for a better studio is at the top of my list of problems to solve at the moment.

What is a typical day like? If you don't have a typical day, what is an ideal day?

I balance work-work and family with my studio practice, so typically I have a variable amount of time to work during the day, depending on my schedule, and then I spend hours at night in the studio. Night time is golden because no one is around to interrupt, and I tend to be more focused. In terms of creative work in the studio, I just work on whatever is most pressing - I have no rhythm. If I’m painting, I’m painting. If I’m sculpting, I’m sculpting. It’s a grind to just stay on task sometimes, so an ideal day would be one in which there are no emails, no unexpected requests or responsibilities, just time to think and work.

What gets you in a creative mindset?

I feel like I’m always in a creative mindset, and the world around me is trying to pull me out of it! Maybe growing up with so much quiet, private time did that to me. Free time and boredom are so underrated.

What criteria do you follow for selecting materials? How long have you worked with this particular media or method?

I work with oil paint and gouache paint for most of my 2D work. I like both because they allow extended interaction with the medium. Gouache is amazingly reworkable - I’m not sure if I use it the same way as others, but I often agitate or remove parts of the painting as I revise and evolve my ideas. I’m also using 3D printing in a lot of the sculpture I’m working on. I’m learning to love ASA plastic because it’s very toolable and can be smoothed and treated for a variety of surface qualities. But there’s something nice also about working digitally and producing something physical - it’s still magical to me, and in that way, somehow very natural.

Can you walk us through your overall process? How long has this approach been a part of your practice?

When I’m painting, I typically start with a sketch. That’s often on paper, and then I translate it into a color sketch digitally. Sometimes a full idea comes first, and I jump right into thinking about color. There’s a lot of back and forth between sketching and actual painting - I usually have an open-ended approach and allow the painting to evolve from the original idea, and I’ve worked in exactly this way since around 2010. I think I approach sculpture in the same way - I have an idea for a form, and then begin to explore the material possibilities, and then the technical process for making it. However, there is less back and forth in creating my 3D work - it would be too time-intensive to rapidly change ideas when nursing 3D printers as part of the process. They are uncompromisingly slow.

Can you talk about some of the ongoing interests, imagery, and concepts that have informed your process and body of work over time? How do you anticipate your work progressing in the future?

At this stage, my ideas are beginning to coalesce into something more finite but flexible, whereas before I was constantly exploring. The world-building impulse I have from Dungeons and Dragons has led me to think of my work opening up this whole other transcendent world, but lately I’ve been thinking of a smaller place, where the relationships between the things I imagine are more tightly connected. There is an existential quiet that I look for in things - like finding this perfectly still moment in an old cartoon that’s in all other ways bursting with motion. Maybe this interest also comes from the desert - I’ve been spending more time outdoors since the pandemic began.

Do you pursue any collaborations, projects, or careers in addition to your studio practice? If so, can you tell us more about those projects, and are there connections between your studio practice and these endeavors?

For now, only my work as a professor. I’m lucky to work in a small institution that enables me to experiment across some pretty disparate media and topics, and I have some great colleagues from whom I’ve learned a lot. I sometimes feel academia is a strange place for me to have landed, but I do get a lot out of teaching, and having good access to technology has been amazingly beneficial.

As a result of the pandemic, many artists have experienced limited access to their studios or loss of exhibitions, income, or other opportunities. Has your way of working (or not working) shifted significantly during this time? Are there unexpected insights or particular challenges you’ve experienced?

I’ve had a tolerable pandemic experience so far. A few opportunities I had lined up in 2020 evaporated, but I had access to my studio and actually spent most of my time there between remote teaching for work and working on art. Due to the omicron strain I’m back in my studio again, for the time being, and am trying to make the best of it. I’m counting myself lucky.

Can you share some of your recent influences? Are there specific works—from visual art, literature, film, or music—that are important to you?

I know this will sound terrible and it’s probably boring enough to be unpublishable, but I’ve had an extremely shallow experience in all of the above over the past few years. There isn’t a lot of art here in Qatar, and I haven’t traveled much due to the pandemic. I stopped listening to music regularly around the same time. What is very constant for me right now, is having whatever random thing on Netflix playing while I work at certain times during the day. Somehow it keeps me rooted in place and I don’t think about it too much, which helps me stay focused. Not paying too much attention has also helped me dig deeper into my own ideas and have a more durable commitment to them.

Who are some contemporary artists you’re excited about? What are the best exhibitions you’ve seen in recent memory and why do they stand out?

I haven’t had much opportunity to see art recently, so my experience has been limited to social media, unfortunately. I truly miss seeing art in person! The work that stays in my mind lately is largely made by artists that make me wonder about their techniques - people that have some sort of wizardly discipline. Lola Gil, Raymond Lemstra, and Louise Despont come to mind immediately. I like artists that make me laugh in awe - maybe Vik Muniz and Tom Sachs. Ridiculous spectacle. Going to great lengths to achieve something very foolish is something I can relate to. Aspire to, maybe?

Do you have any tips or advice that someone has shared with you that you have found particularly helpful?

Someone in grad school once recommended that artists should figure out a problem they want to work on for the next five years, and commit to it. Five years later you get to reevaluate and figure out how the problem has evolved, and commit to whatever it’s become for another five years. I thought about that a lot, and it’s helped me. I’m very distractible, and having a solid problem to work on has kept moving along a fruitful trajectory. I also learned early on that you need to remember to keep good documentation of everything you do. You just never know when you might need to look back at something as a reference, even if it’s just a process photo.

What are you working on in the studio right now? What’s coming up next for you?

I’m wrapping up some sculpture right now - a long project that’s several years in the making. It involves 3D printed ceramics, plastic parts, and other crafted objects. I hope to be able to show some of these soon - they’re finally close to completion. I’m also working on a screenprint project, and then will get myself back to painting as soon as I can. I have a few exhibitions coming up that are being planned at the moment, but none have been announced yet so I won’t mention them here.

To find out more about Ryan Browning check out his Instagram and website.