Lee Madgwick paints buildings that breathe—or at least, feel like they might any second. Born in King’s Lynn, England, he studied graphic design before turning his eyes to scenes of abandonment, isolation, and what he calls “imagined realism.” His work sits in that strange zone where urban decay meets quiet fantasy, with a mischievous edge under every crumbling façade.

When you see one of Madgwick’s paintings, you catch a glimpse of a structure that’s just slightly off. In Drift, bricks drift away from a minimal shell, floating upward. In Fracture, a monolithic apartment building hovers over green fields, crumbling from beneath. The scenes are silent, deserted, yet they crackle with possibility. There’s no one in sight—but you know someone was here. Or will be.

What I dig most is how he balances nostalgia with menace. The skies are painted with hands and fingertips, full of moody grays that feel alive. Urban architecture—usually rigid and immovable—becomes fragile in his hands. The walls peel, the paint tears, vines creep into corners. Nature and man-made forms war and whisper at once.

Madgwick works largely with oils and acrylics, layering textures slowly, revisiting parts over days. He builds entire atmospheres through light, shadow, and suggestion. He resists over-explanation. His narratives are partial. You bring your own ghosts into those windows.

His genre might be “surreal buildings,” but he also mines liminal space—the places in between: structure and ruin, memory and forgetting, shelter and ghost. His work asks: What does a house know about the lives lived inside? What stories do walls keep—when people leave and time trickles in?

If you want to wander through these uncanny domestic dreams—structures that look like they carry secrets—head over to leemadgwick.co.uk. It’s where haunted façades become poetry.