Featured Artist Ann-Marie Brown

Canadian artist Ann-Marie Brown shares a softly ethereal portfolio that captures each subject in her distinctive style. Enjoy, and visit her website to see more.

 

 

I am located on the edge of the Salish Sea, painting in a studio I built on the property. Every morning I take my coffee down a brick path and open the door to silence and possibility.

 

 

Arriving at this moment was years in the making. In my early 20’s I was attending seminary in England when a crisis of faith led to a journey hitchhiking through the Middle East, soul searching and talking with people from other belief systems. Eventually I made the choice to return to Canada to attend university. Once there, it was through an elective course in painting that I found a vehicle for working through ideas without words.

 

 

I produce paintings in bodies of work that unfold into narrative when hung together. One body of work included in the image gallery here began during the insular time of Covid when my family planted a forest garden in coastal British Columbia.

 

 

Climate change has been a challenge with drought, flooding and fires. I’ve been painting the fruits that do grow. Portraits of apples and plums, with as much attention paid to their individuality as I pay to my figure works.

 

 

Painting in a garden in a time of shifting ecologies is a celebration of resilience shadowed by knowledge. When Dutch painters in the 17th century painted fruit, they were in contemplation of the transience of human life, firm in the conviction that the eternal seasons would continue to unfold even as the eyes looking at the painting would turn to dust. To paint fruit now is to think about the ephemeral nature of all things, including the ecosystem.

 

 

Each body of work has its own reason for coming into being but ultimately the spark that becomes a series comes from lines of poetry, music, scent, light falling on things and bearing witness to the complexities of human nature.

 

 

There’s a slickness that I’m resisting both in what I choose to paint and the method I use to do it. I believe the creative self is fundamentally analogue, and it needs to dance with the imperfections of the real world in order to create something of substance.

 

 

That dance creates space within the painting. Space that serves as an invitation to the viewer because the painting is left to be finished in their mind. In this way the images become a story that the viewer is invited to co-create.

 

Ann-Marie Brown invites you to follow on Instagram.

 

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