Archive Artist Profile

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Mark Brown�s paintings have about them a sense of place; or rather, places, even within a single work.  They suggest everything from a macro, bird�s eye view to a micro, molecular, view of life to, perhaps, place understood as simply a state of mind.  Then again they are entities unto themselves;  their own singular Universes.  His work can be severely reductive with its spare surfaces and forms or a bit less so when the latter are biomorphic.  Indeed an interesting contrast presents itself between the straight-edged architectural forms and the sensuously, though impersonalized, curved organic ones.  Even so, each seems to battle it out in an attempt to mutually engulf the other.

Untitled, 1997, oil on canvas, 20 x 16 in.

Untitled, 1997, oil on canvas, 20 x 16 in.

All of this is to suggest, within this overall body of work, a varied range of approach.  The result is paintings that are, for their diminutive size, raw and engaging.  One way they might be characterized is as �Winter Paintings� for the way they project a certain existential bleakness.  To a large degree this also informs their content: are they about extreme places on this earth and/or not of it? Or are the extremities those of soul and spirit?  Are they organic or anti organic? The answer is, yes; all this and more.  These are not depressing paintings but they are disturbing for suggesting the more difficult

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