Lee Madgwick's Surreal Structures Capture the Beauty and Unease of Isolation | stupidDOPE | Est. 2008

"Under skies heavy with storm-gray clouds, the architectural ruins in Lee Madgwick's paintings seem to exist somewhere between reality and imagination. His works are not just landscapes but psychological portraits-of solitude, fragility, and the strange poetry found in decay. With a style that merges surrealism and realism in equal measure, Madgwick transforms the familiar English countryside into a dreamlike world that's quietly charged with tension."

"Madgwick's work occupies a peculiar emotional space: it's serene yet unsettling, pastoral yet post-apocalyptic. His compositions often feature dilapidated facades, their windows dark and roofs half-collapsed, surrounded by overgrown grass or encroaching shrubbery. These scenes, though grounded in recognizable architecture, seem to belong to a parallel world-one where the ordinary laws of physics and time have quietly loosened their grip."

"Take "Drift," one of the standout works in his new series. A boxy, nondescript building sits amid a field of green, but its bricks have begun to break free, floating slowly upward into the clouds as if gravity were optional. There's no movement other than that upward drift-an eerie calm that amplifies the surrealism. In "Fracture," a crumbling apartment block hovers above the ground, its lower sections vanishing into thin air."

Paintings depict architectural ruins beneath storm-gray skies, blending surrealism and realism to create dreamlike, tension-filled landscapes. The works focus on desolate buildings, empty windows, and collapsing roofs set against overgrown countryside. Many compositions suggest physical impossibilities—floating bricks, hovering apartment blocks—conveying a sense of levitation and frozen collapse. The absence of people produces questions about abandonment and remnants of past lives. The series will debut at Brian Sinfield Gallery in Burford, Oxfordshire, from October 18 through November 4. The overall mood balances serenity with unease, evoking solitude, fragility, and the poetry of decay.

Read at stupidDOPE | Est. 2008