Emerging Artists | Brienne M. Brown

Brienne Brown, Commerce Corner, watercolor, 12 x 16.

Brienne Brown, Commerce Corner, watercolor, 12 x 16.

This story was featured in the January 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art January 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

Plein-air artist Brienne M. Brown grew up in a close-knit suburb of Salt Lake City, UT. She lives on the opposite side of the country these days, in central Pennsylvania, but her small community evokes the same warm and friendly environs of her childhood neighborhood. Perhaps that’s why she finds herself routinely inspired by small-town life, no matter where she’s painting. “I love big cities, too, but small towns and that homey feel are my favorite thing to paint,” she says.

Brown began painting as a child. Back then, to her mother’s dismay, few items in her wardrobe survived her hobby unsplattered. “I would get these ideas and come home from church or school, still wearing my nice clothes, and start painting,” chuckles the artist. Though she ultimately embarked on a career in toxicology, Brown left her job after the birth of her first son in 2008. “Suddenly,” she says, “I had more time to paint.”

Juggling life as a stay-at-home mom, Brown devoted her spare time to learning as much as she could about watercolors, her medium of choice as a new mother. “I thought it would be less toxic, and the more I learned, the more I fell in love with the medium,” she says. Brown was introduced to plein-air painting through a workshop with acclaimed watercolorist Roland Lee, and today it’s a practice she can’t live without. But Brown, who is now a nationally recognized artist herself, says she rarely portrays pure landscapes. “I love putting that human element in there,” she says. “I’m a people person, and I think that comes out in my paintings.”

Find Brown’s work at The Mission Gallery, St. George, UT, and The Green Drake Gallery, Millheim, PA.

This story was featured in the January 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art January 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

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