Winter Walk

In Winter Walk, the repetition of forms across the white surface—copied by hand with variations in color, shading, and orientation—creates an eerily homogenized landscape. The frolicking figures look lost in a sterile landscape of sameness extending endlessly beyond the frame of the canvas.

To create this flattened image Roger Brown employs conventions closer to wallpaper and poster design than traditional landscape painting. Indeed, Roger Brown studied the art of “Generative Systems” at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which included silkscreen, intaglio, lithography, and xerographic media. His works on canvas employ such commercial techniques, which were also favored by Pop Artists of the time. Yet, for all its affinities with Pop Art, Winter Walk’s narrative component—as expressed in the stick-thin human figures appearing in the landscape—adds a dimension of social commentary.