Acclaimed artists Peter Brown (Pete The Street), Brian Henderson and Euan McGregor are showing at The Lemond Gallery, Glasgow from September 19 (until September 27)
A three man show featuring a Banksy-approved creator of street scenes, an artist with a love of pop culture, and a painter of landscapes who’s drawn to what he calls “the in-between spaces” will offer visitors an exhibition of contrasts and surprises when it opens at The Lemond Gallery in Glasgow this weekend.
Peter Brown, known to his 200,000 Instagram followers as Pete The Street, is a Reading-born painter who followed a degree in Fine Art with a 30 year career working en plein air (for which read all types of weather) to create evocative street scenes.
Now based in Bath, he has travelled to Cuba, India, Vietnam and New York in pursuit of his art, and in 2023 made a visit to Glasgow to be involved in Banksy’s blockbuster Cut & Run exhibition at the city’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA).
The request to be a part of the GoMA show cametatives on earth (or online, at least). So how did Pete The Street come to the attention of the world’s most famous graffiti artist?
He laughs. “There’s a question I can’t answer. I’m based in the West Country and the general consensus is that he is too, and it wasn’t long after I had a show in Bath. Maybe he saw my work there – or maybe he’s seen me over the years. I’ve painted on the street in Bath and in Bristol.”
Kingsborough Gardens, The Day Of The Eclipse by Peter Brown, aka Pete The Street (Image: Supplied)
And no, he never actually met Banksy, at least not knowingly. “I got nice messages, but I’ve not even got a bit of writing from Banksy.”
The trip to Glasgow proved important in another way, though. Brown “got hooked”, as he puts it, and over two stints in the city in 2023 and 2026 painted close to 100 street scenes. To do so he ranged, flâneur-like, in a loop from the Merchant City to the Gorbals, from Govan to the West End and Garnethill, then on to the East End.
For the show at The Lemond Gallery he is showing 25 or so studies, mostly of the West End. However the full set will be published in book form in November.
“The architecture in Glasgow is second to none. It’s just stunning,” he says admiringly. Another thing the city has in abundance is the stuff which creates glistening, reflective pavements. He likes those too. “Most of my paintings of Glasgow are in the rain,” he admits.
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His own style, though, is very far from Banksy’s graphic stencil art. He is an admirer of the paintings of Christopher Chamberlain, a London-based artist active in the mid 20th century. “He painted these very gnarly, quite barren street scenes of docklands and places, in very muted tones.”
Gnarly is also a decent description for Brown’s own work, mostly oils painted on board, though broadly he identifies as sitting within the school of British Impressionism. “It’s all about being out there,” he says. “I don’t do photo-realism … [the paintings] are a bit rough and ready. So it’s all about that experience of painting out in the open, which is very much an Impressionist thing.”
Ultimately, though, he’s about the vibe. About distilling into his works the essence of a street or a building, and bringing to his work something of the spirit of the people who daily pass along the thoroughfares he paints – and who very often stop to chat with the amiable Southerner.
“The best compliment I ever get is: ‘I’ve lived here all my life and you’ve captured the feeling of the place’,” he says. “If I’m honest, I did art college and all that, but I’m very uncomfortable knowing what a good or bad painting is, whereas I’m very comfortable trying to capture the feeling of a place. I try to divorce myself from the idea of whether it’s great art or not because, frankly, I haven’t got a bloody clue. There’s so much hot air about art.”
It’s not hard to see why Banksy loves Pete The Street.
Euan McGregor trained in printmaking at Glasgow School of Art in the 1990s. Today, as well as teaching art and photography in schools, he paints works in acrylic in which water and buildings – often distilleries – feature prominently.
Brodick and Goatfell, by Euan McGregor (Image: Supplied)
“I’ve always been attracted to the sea and the in-between spaces and areas around it,” he explains. “I live by the sea and have been around it all my life.”
Architecture is another interest. Previous series of paintings have taken as their subject the outdoor lidos which were built across the UK in the early 20th century. Another looked at the Modernist houses you find sprinkled along England’s south coast, particularly around Dungeness in Kent.
A more recent series looks at distilleries, buildings McGregor views as “cultural cathedrals rather than industrial eyesores. I like their distinct and unique look.”
Featured in the show at The Lemond Gallery are studies of the Bowmore, Laphroaig, Scapa and Lindores Abbey distillery buildings, alongside a study of Brockwell Lido in London, views of Inverary and Lochinver, and an intriguing aerial view of Padstow harbour in Cornwall. It was made using images taken from McGregor’s drone.
The works themselves are graphic and precise, and employ elements of relief printmaking. This, he says, allows for less “intentional human brushwork” and more of what he calls “haphazard mark-making.”
What’s also notable about them is what isn’t there: humans. It enhances the graphic feel and keeps the eye drawn to the buildings and their backdrop. “Having empty spaces or lack of people is more about having the view to yourself in a special way,” he says. “Or being the first to stumble into the view, I suppose.”
In complete contrast, Edinburgh College of Art-trained painter Brian Henderson now focuses on the still life having had what he calls “an unsuccessful flirtation with New York School-style abstract expressionism” and then a foray into figurative painting.
Book and Running Figures by Brian Henderson (Image: Supplied)
“My main interest has always been light and how it reflects off and passes through different surfaces,” he says. “From that point of view it doesn’t matter too much to me whether the object I’m painting is a vase, a piece of fruit – or a plastic Mickey Mouse.”
He does like a plastic Mickey Mouse, though. See also classic pop culture figures as Tintin, Snowy, Minnie Mouse and Pluto. They all feature in the works to be shown in the Glasgow show, often looking as if they have escaped from the screen or from the pages of a book and entered the real world – or a stagey facsimile of it. And if they raise a smile, well that’s all part of the plan.
“I’ve always been drawn to the humour of Pop Art, and I guess that’s why the Disney and Tintin figures have crept into a lot of my paintings. I like interesting juxtapositions of objects that are unrelated, apart from relationships of shape or colour.”
The late David Hockney is an influence and, less well known perhaps, American Pop Art painter Wayne Thiebaud, who once worked for Walt Disney as an animator and whose vividly coloured subjects included cakes, ice creams and hot dogs. You see it all in Henderson’s exquisite, precise and meticulously planned still lifes.
Whether your tastes run to the outdoors and what the eyes can see, or to interiors and to the conjurings of the mind’s eye, there’s something for everyone in this wide-ranging show.
Peter Brown (Pete The Street), Brian Henderson and Euan McGregor are showing at The Lemond Gallery, Glasgow from September 19 (until September 27)
