Artists in Residency
(Literally)
Sharon Bond Brown
I have been drawing people since I could hold a crayon. I grew up surrounded by art, artists, and lively conversations about people, and while art took a backseat to other career and family demands after college, at the age of 40 I returned to drawing and painting full time and haven’t looked back since.
The human presence is a constant in my work. Often beginning with old snapshots, candid photos of family and strangers, I try to capture slices of time, evocative moments. I am fascinated by what home photographers inadvertently catch: images that are casual and non-reverential, the subjects captured without their masks on, the scene not lit or staged. The results are situations, faces and places that resonate with viewers, reminding them of the life they really led instead of the stories they created about their pasts.
Perhaps my interests in family images and portraits of people in unguarded moments come from growing up with a father, a grandfather and a brother who were psychiatrists. Perhaps my desire to draw and paint was formed by a mother and her three sisters, all of whom were artists and enthusiastically encouraged me.
My preferred media are oil paint and watercolor. I am still using a German paint box of 36 colors that I bought in 1959 on a family vacation. I am indebted to a small but mighty magnifying glass that enables me to discern details in tiny faded black and white photographs. Colors are all my choice. I may adopt the images in their entirety, but I often edit for better composition and a less distracting background. Whether I am painting oil on canvas or watercolor on paper, I start by carefully drawing in charcoal or pencil. Then I fill in with layers of paint ending with the details. Sometimes I have used an acrylic underpainting with oil washes on top, so that colors glow from beneath the surface. I paint every day and it still thrills and satisfies me.
Rex Brown
Rexford G. Brown has done a lot of things in his life…
He holds a B.A. in American Literature from Middlebury College; an M.A. in American and British Literature from the University of Iowa; and a Ph.D. in Modern Letters from the University of Iowa.
He is the author of Schools of Thought: how the politics of literacy shape thinking in classroom; It’s Your Fault! An insider’s guide to learning and thinking in city schools; and dozens of reports and articles on literature, writing, thinking, literacy, art, schooling, and teaching. He was a writer, policy analyst and Senior Fellow at the Education Commission of the States, an education policy think tank in Denver, Colorado; the founder of an inner city school based on experiential learning; a college, university and high school English teacher; the director of MacArthur Foundation funded center on Policy and the Higher Literacies; a Fellow at the Rockerfeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Bellagio, Italy; and the Director of Teacher Education at the University of Denver’s Morgridge College of Education, from which he retired in 2010.
Rex and Sharon Brown are the owners of The Pattern Shop Studio. Although Sharon is the principal artist in the family, Rex has written about young people’s knowledge, skill, and understanding of art, has taught art history, and from time to time has taken up drawing, print making, and painting. Most recently, he has been creating artworks based on Buddhist murals found in Burma/Myanmar’s ancient caves and temples.