Brandon Logan

Brandon Logan, Kitchen Sofa, 2019, Acrylic and string, 110 × 140 cm

Graduating from Edinburgh College of Art and the University of Edinburgh in 2019 Brandon Logan (b. 1996, Aberdeen) currently lives and works in Stromness, in the Orkney Islands where he grew up. He makes paintings through a distinctive process which developed from a desire to work on a surface more permeable and mutable than a traditional canvas. This technique involves the flooding, sealing and fusing of warps of string using the gradual application of layers of paint, resulting in works with an open, fretted structure and an innate flexibility. Sometimes the material is further cut away to form a repeated motif, excavating and revealing the layers and method of composition, measuring out the rhythm of their making.

While these works may at first seem sculptural or nod to Orkney's rich, poetic traditions of weaving and tapestry, Brandon says:

“I always think of them as paintings because it’s a specific interest in what paint can do that keeps me making them. I’m obsessed with the simple transformation of fluid, liquid colour, to solid that can take place in my hands, it’s like magic to me every time.”

Logan's paintings exist at a very human scale, some measuring six feet in length and others fitting in the palm of a hand.

Film made with Brandon Logan, 2021. With thanks to Pier Art Centre, Stromness and the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh

“Scale can go anywhere from metres across to the length of a finger, and they do different things. Recently I’ve been working almost solely on small paintings, there’s a different intensity of focus needed when something fits in your hand, like trying to say something in as few words as possible.”

- BL

Installation of works by Brandon Logan, The Feast Room, Ingleby, Edinburgh. Photograph: John McKenzie