HENRY BROWN

ABOUT THE ARTIST

PAINTINGS

Interplay 2019
Interplay 2019, 60" x 72"
acrylic, pencil, gesso on canvas

Henry Brown is an abstract painter living and working in New York City. He combines geometric imagery with technical under-drawings in his artwork. Brown draws the schematics on gessoed canvases and then paints the imagery. The white ground and under-drawings remain exposed as part of the finished paintings.

Interconnected, the under-drawings and painted imagery function together pictorially. Both also exist on two separate levels. The under-drawings show the substructure, planning and execution for the final imagery.

Interplay 2019 detail
Interplay 2019 (detail), 60" x 72"

The painting technique appears impersonal but incident from the process is evident. Marks in the knifed finish of the gessoed layer, variations in pencil lines, and eccentricities in painted edges document Brown’s facture.

His flat imagery appears appears fixed but visual perception alters spatial relationships. Depth shifts, activating the painting surfaces as they advance and recede. The fixed position coexists with the state of change. Henry Brown’s geometry is not a restricted system. It presents possibilities.

EXHIBITIONS

American Abstract Artists: Digital Prints 2012 – 2019 (traveling exhibition)

Herron School of Art + Design
Marsh Gallery, Eskenazi Hall
Indiana University and Purdue University
Indianapolis, IN.
January 26 – March 11, 2022

The Gallery at The Visual and Performing Arts Center
Western Connecticut State University
Danbury, CT
October 15 – December 6, 2021

Transmitter Gallery
1329 Willoughby Ave
Brooklyn, NY
January 3 – February 6, 2020