Gabe Brown
Gabe Brown searches for meaning in the unknown through the mediation of paint, canvas, and paper. Recognizing that she is a small part of a larger, richer universe, Brown takes up the challenge of imaging for herself, and for us, what reality beyond our tangible experience might look like. Brown’s paintings and works on paper tend to feature alluring and mysterious narrative vignettes that read as glimpses of a parallel universe, “a parallel universe,” according to Brown, “that questions the natural scheme of life itself.” As alien as her alternate world may seem, it still contains the desires, temptations, and frailties that are part of the human condition.
For Brown, the process of painting is a way to deal with the many possibilities we face in life. Accordingly, she imbues her work with a sense of herself and of the wonder she experiences as she considers the enormous complexity of the world. Brown’s diverse imagery encompasses both the seen and unseen, representing different aspects of the world: juxtapositions of opposites, abstract geometric shapes, unfurling bunches of leaves, the multiplication of cells and their structures, conversations between birds, fecundity and regeneration, and the forces that drive water. Whether one regards Brown’s …
Gabe Brown searches for meaning in the unknown through the mediation of paint, canvas, and paper. Recognizing that she is a small part of a larger, richer universe, Brown takes up the challenge of imaging for herself, and for us, what reality beyond our tangible experience might look like. Brown’s paintings and works on paper tend to feature alluring and mysterious narrative vignettes that read as glimpses of a parallel universe, “a parallel universe,” according to Brown, “that questions the natural scheme of life itself.” As alien as her alternate world may seem, it still contains the desires, temptations, and frailties that are part of the human condition.
For Brown, the process of painting is a way to deal with the many possibilities we face in life. Accordingly, she imbues her work with a sense of herself and of the wonder she experiences as she considers the enormous complexity of the world. Brown’s diverse imagery encompasses both the seen and unseen, representing different aspects of the world: juxtapositions of opposites, abstract geometric shapes, unfurling bunches of leaves, the multiplication of cells and their structures, conversations between birds, fecundity and regeneration, and the forces that drive water. Whether one regards Brown’s work as reinventions of reality or as pictorial expressions of an alternate universe, her work constitutes an experience of coming closer to an understanding of how we identify with the world we already know.
Gabe Brown’s paintings and works on paper have been exhibited nationally in galleries and museums including Kenise Barnes Contemporary Art, Scarsdale, NY, The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz, NY, Butters Gallery, Portland, OR, The Saratoga Arts Center, Saratoga Springs, NY, Garrison Art Center, Garrison, NY, John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY, Schweinfurth Arts Center, SUNY Brockport, The Horticultural Society of New York, Albany International Airport, and Sears-Peyton Gallery, NYC. Brown was recently awarded a fellowship at Saltonstall Artist Colony in Ithaca, NY where she will be a resident in August 2016. Previously she was a Resident Fellow in Visual Arts at the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Red Wing, MN and was awarded a Full Fellowship to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In 2014 she was the recipient of the Sustainable Arts Foundation Award and was a selected artist for ArtBridge in Kingston, NY. Brown is an Adjunct Professor in Painting and Drawing at Fordham University and SUNY New Paltz where she has received two Merit Awards for Professional Achievement.
Courtesy of Matteawan Gallery
The Gund Collection, New York, NY
Memorial Union Art Gallery, University of California, Davis, CA
New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM
