A graduate of the Royal Academy Schools, Martin Lea Brown’s paintings reflect a self-confessed obsession of criminals in disguise– underdogs rising up against the bias in an often corrupt establishment.  As a young art student, Brown was graced with the pleasure of meeting the ‘Great Train Robber’, the notorious Buster Edwards who advised him to “Watch them trains”.  Brown took this advice to heart and fed himself on a diet of Bonnie and Clyde, Dog Day Afternoon and Crime Watch UK, and soon became a prolific artist whose paintings have a humorous response to the current cash crisis. Brown constructs wide-screen Hopperesque scenes of Halloween-masked raiders committing the perfect crime at point blank range.  Daily portrayals of heists, robberies and other high culture moments, Martin Lea Brown works the oils deeply to achieve a rich, vivid and colourful painting structure, where his subjects are simultaneously dark-humoured, satirical, and evident of the often fantasized desire to live the ‘Costa del Crime’ life.

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