Maggi Brown
Focused on the physicality of her surface, painter Maggi Brown’s canvases feature written scrawl, dense layers of oil paint, graphite marks, and occasionally embedded objects such as Ginko leaves, sand, and cotton string. She explains, “In a broad sense, I am interested in the connection between things which are opposed, what they have in common, and what kind of visual statement they make when combined.” In other words, her illegible marks form connections with her brushstrokes, and the depth of the paint’s layers meet on surface. In
Lose the Day Lilies
(2012) for example, the artist has carved scribbles into the thick blue paint of the background as well as the abstracted yellow petals that overtake the foreground. Her dappled approach covers the entire tableau, congealing into a unified shimmering. Via painting, scraping, scratching, overlaying, and glazing, the artist composes contemplative landscapes out of busy elements–working towards minimalism from its opposite.
Maggi Brown’s paintings have been shown at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art,
San Francisco Art Institute, MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, MA,
Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA and DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA
among other institutions. She was a recipient of the Pollack-Krasner …
Focused on the physicality of her surface, painter Maggi Brown’s canvases feature written scrawl, dense layers of oil paint, graphite marks, and occasionally embedded objects such as Ginko leaves, sand, and cotton string. She explains, “In a broad sense, I am interested in the connection between things which are opposed, what they have in common, and what kind of visual statement they make when combined.” In other words, her illegible marks form connections with her brushstrokes, and the depth of the paint’s layers meet on surface. In
Lose the Day Lilies
(2012) for example, the artist has carved scribbles into the thick blue paint of the background as well as the abstracted yellow petals that overtake the foreground. Her dappled approach covers the entire tableau, congealing into a unified shimmering. Via painting, scraping, scratching, overlaying, and glazing, the artist composes contemplative landscapes out of busy elements–working towards minimalism from its opposite.
Maggi Brown’s paintings have been shown at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art,
San Francisco Art Institute, MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, MA,
Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA and DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA
among other institutions. She was a recipient of the Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant.
Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA
DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA
Elsie Kahn, Hong Kong
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston, MA
