MMX by Paul S. Brown - W.H. Patterson Gallery - October 2010
Friday, October 1, 2010 at 12:20PM “I’ve been spending some time outside the city, and I think that’s very much reflected in this year’s show" says Paul S. Brown, a North Carolinian oil painter whose studio has been in London for the last decade. He is renowned for his exquisite figurative work, still lives and landscapes. His latest exhibition, MMX, will be held at W.H. Patterson Gallery in October.
There’s a strong outdoors theme running through MMX. It’s a reflection of Brown’s upbringing, a Huckleberry Finn childhood spent roaming the outdoors, fishing every day and studying the nature around him.
“I grew up in the country but living in the city, working from the studio, you can lose your sense of what season it is. I wanted to get some of that connection back into my work.”
Brown’s paintings are remarkable for their timeless quality, which is borne out by his working methods. Apprenticed to leading Classical Realist D. Jeffrey Mims as a teenager, Brown was trained in the rigorous French academic tradition, culminating his studies in Italy.
“My whole palette is historical – the most recent colour on it is from the mid-Nineteenth Century, so in that respect there’s nothing on my palette without my having seen proof of it being around at least a hundred years ago; that way I can see how well it’s aged. With that kind of stability I don’t feel the need to use modern synthetic paints.”
“This is in keeping with the reason for doing the pictures from life, without modern conveniences like projectors or photographs. I’ll even choose the right weather to paint an object, knowing that on a clear blue day it’s going to look different to how it will on a muted, softer day.
“The whole relationship of the objects changes with the different skies. So you’re constantly selecting and choosing, from the canvasses and pigments all the way to the available lighting.”
To research his wine-themed still lives, Brown spends time travelling in France. This not only enriches the composition of his work but also that of the raw materials – Brown makes his paints by hand and France abounds in the natural pigments that he uses,
“It’s truly magnificent to be able to travel to the source of my paints, to have the satisfaction of knowing that you’re using the best pigment, bought at the mines and hand-ground yourself. It’s immensely pleasing when I pull out a tube of, say, yellow ochre, and know exactly where it came from and the journey I went through to go and get it. That adds an emotional depth to the painting and gives it a sense of history even at its early stages.”
The wine paintings are reflective of Brown’s love for a craft that, like his style of painting, has a strict discipline. As he observes, “There’s a rigorous practice that has to be adhered to in the making of the wine and that’s mirrored in the reverential process of decanting, airing and serving it. I love that.”
“When I’m setting the paintings up I’m imagining the pride that a person feels with opening their bottle. That’s how I know it’s a good picture, when I’m understanding it and feeling the same kind of pride in telling that story.”
In his figurative work, Brown upholds the academic late Nineteenth Century French tradition. The poses are elegant, the flesh tones delicate and superbly rendered. He feels that his show would be incomplete without the figures.
“It’s where you put all your powers to full force. There’s no messing around with them. There’s no greater feeling of artistic accomplishment than realising you’ve done a good figure. It’s a way of being in league with the painters you love, doing justice to the learning that you’ve received from them.”
Regardless of the subject matter, Brown’s paintings emanate serenity and repose. He sums it up best himself:
“For me all the pictures are very much about inner pleasure, a settled feeling of accomplishment that you have at the end of a good day. A feet-up kind of attitude.”
Reader Comments (1)
hi paul me and my freind like your paintings see you when you come to visit
archie seymour [your god son whos birthday is on the 5 of may]