Emily Brown b. 1943

Raised in rural Chester County in a family devoted to medicine and mental health, Emily Brown has long drawn from the natural landscape for personal renewal and visual imagery. Brown's practice began with small-scale plein air oil paintings of the countryside of inland Maine and parts of Philadelphia. Her restless curiosity led to making larger paintings outdoors, some with multiple images or as diptychs or triptychs. With the acquisition of a studio she explored work in other materials and at larger scales, evolving an interactive practice of ink wash drawing. Her recent subjects include trees and sections of woods, details on the ground, and water surfaces. Moved by the transience of every living thing, she values the practice of looking hard at what is – and then partnering with the aqueous medium to convey a sense of the experience.

Close to Home is a wonderful example of one of Emily Brown's depictions of water. In these works, she has deftly merged both her subject and preferred painting medium. Combining the properties of water-based sumi ink, subtle brushwork, and areas of blank paper, Brown conveys a sense of limitlessness in the quiet surface movement of gentle waves. She depicts the motion of the water by varying the thickness of the brush marks and the blank spaces in between. Her compositions completely fill the large sheets of paper on which she paints, just as the open ocean fills the viewer’s space. Whether the format is horizontal or vertical, her water views command our attention like the vastness of the ocean. Importantly, the essential sense of fluidity of the sumi ink in these paintings is also their source of a deeper meaning.

The artist has taught in many ways: inner city pre-school programs, middle school art at Baldwin, drawing at the University of the Arts, and painting and drawing at PAFA. For 8 years she worked as costumer for the drama deptartment at Germantown Friends School. She currently volunteers in a public school reading program in North Philadelphia. She lived in Philadelphia after studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and now resides in Garrison, New York. She and her husband, the photographer Will Brown, summer in Montville, Maine.