Brandon McLean is an Orlando-based mixed media artist who creates multi-layered paintings and installation works rooted heavily in the realms of nostalgia. Much of the work uses appropriated imagery, text, logos and stories from both pop culture as well as more personal, auto-biographical sources.
An emphasis on history and storytelling is an important aspect in McLean’s work. The nostalgic or retro feel to the work is not by accident. McLean has regularly stated he tends to gravitate towards images, people, and stories with a weathered, worked aesthetic. Elements that are a little wounded, damaged, or have been beaten up somewhere along the way. The new, sometimes awkward, juxtapositions of the appropriated images found and placed together provides for continuation ~ giving new life to dated cast offs. Maybe the works say something intimately personal, or maybe they’re mute.