Glen Brown

"Brown appropriates images created by living, working artists, such as Frank Auerbach and Howard Hodgkin, as well as images by artists more established in the historical canon, such as Rembrandt or Salvador Dalí. Brown's paintings, which are uniformly smooth in surface, typically offer a trompe l'oeil illusion of turbulent, painterly application.

There was some controversy over his exhibition at the 2000 Turner Prize, as one of the paintings was closely based on a science-fiction illustration Double Star produced in 1973 by the artist Tony Roberts.^[1] Brown has also appropriated individual space scene paintings by Chris Foss and in the one case copying and altering it (Exercise One (for Ian Curtis), 1995) and in the other, leaving it entirely unchanged (Dark Angel (for Ian Curtis), 2002). This gave rise to a charge of plagiarism. The resulting legal action was eventually settled by Brown out of court.

In 2009, Brown claimed that "to make something up from scratch is nonsensical. Images are a language. It’s impossible to make a painting that is not borrowed — even the images in your dreams refer to reality."<sup>[2] 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Brown


This was reassuring to me because I am currently working on recreating the oldest Mayan mural ever found, dating back to 100 BC...the pre-classical period.  However, it is frustrating because I am constantly thinking about how I will make it my own so that my message can be portrayed visually. If anyone is good at doing this I would be honored to chat with you.</sup>