Joan Brown
Joan Brown was born in San Francisco, California, United States on February 13th, 1938 and is the Painter. At the age of 52, Joan Brown biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
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Joan Brown (February 13, 1938 – October 26, 1990) was an American figurative painter who lived and worked in Northern California.
She was a participant of the Bay Area Figurative Movement's "second generation."
Education and early life
Joan Brown was born in San Francisco on February 19, 1938, to a second-generation Irish father and a native Californian mother. Brown's family life was extremely unhappy. Her father drank heavily and her mother, who had intended to work rather than a family, had a tendency to commit suicide often. Brown could not wait to grow up and move out.
Brown enrolled in Catholic Schools in San Francisco, first St. Vincent de Paul School and then Presentation High School, which culminated in her retorts to Catholic education and faith. She studied at the California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute), graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1959 and a Master of Arts degree in 1960. Elmer Bischoff, her instructor and mentor, was on display in Elm Bischoff. She had her first solo gallery exhibition in 1958 when she was still a student.
Bill Brown, a fellow student who had encouraged her to finish her studies and work with Bischoff, married her first husband in 1956. However, she became ill right before her wedding, so Bill Brown gave her books containing reproductions of paintings by Rembrandt, Francisco Goya, Diego Velázquez, and other masters. Brown had time to read the books meticulously due to her sickness. "I'd never seen any of this stuff," she later reported, and "I felt this tremendous rush of energy." She was inspired to want to follow their example and discovered that painting professionally was exactly what she was supposed to do.
In 1962, Joan and Bill Brown's marriage was annulled. Manuel Neri, a Bay Area Figurative sculptor, was married from 1962 to 1966, but their relationship and artistic collaboration dates back many years before that.
Career
Brown's style of figurative painting combining bright color, occasionally cartoonish drawing, and personal symbolism brought him to fame. When she was 22 years old, her first museum display at the Whitney annual show in New York (now the Whitney Biennial) took place in 1960. She was the youngest artist to be included in the show that year.
Brown would flip through magazines and sketch any celebrities she encountered as a teen and then make pencil sketches of them. Brown took a summer class at CSFA with Elmer Bischoff in 1956. Bischoff was the teacher who influenced Brown the most by his motivation, encouragement, and general mentorship. He told her to follow her intuition and not worry about little details and academic rules. She said that her teaching methods enabled her to make mistakes and learn from them. Brown encouraged her to explore the fine art and the challenges that came with making her artwork. Brown became more aware and focused on discovering her talents and techniques.
Many of Brown's paintings were directly related to events that occurred in her life, and was influenced by Bischoff's teaching style. She had other passions other than art. She loved to dance and swim. She was also instrumental in her son's development, as well as her romantic affairs and marriages. All of these activities were incorporated into her art. Joan Brown's artwork has become increasingly popular and admired. Brown's first New York City exhibition of her abstract expressionist paintings, aged 22, came in 1960.
As she progressed in her career and life, her passions began to shift. She mainly concentrated on ancient cultures and spirituality leading up to her death.
Brown's transition from painting abstract works to more focused on figurative images in 1960 and 1961 as she began to mature as an artist. These paintings were the first to feature vivid hues and dramatic lighting. The energy she brought into these paintings came from the use of large brush strokes and palette knives. Paint will also drip randomly on some areas of the canvas. The photographs she portrayed helped set the tone that these paintings, such as Portrait of Bob for Bingo (1960), were very autobiographical and helped to depict significant events and objects in her life. Her painting The Sky Blew Up in Salinas (1960) had many abstract shapes influenced by Peter Voulkos' ceramic works and Frank Lobdell's painting.
Brown's second husband, Manuel Neri, had a son, Noel Elmer Neri, in 1962. Brown's paintings from 1963–1964 were devoted to her son's life. She portrayed important events and challenges in her son's life at this time. Noel's First Christmas (1963), one of her first paintings that emphasized Noel's first Christmas (1963), was particularly meaningful to her because it combined her love for her son with her love for Christmas. In 1964, she produced few paintings because she was occupied with teaching as well as dealing with her marriage to Neri, whom she divorced in 1966.
Brown decided to completely change her painting style in 1965. Believing that the thick impasto, large scale, and vivid hue of her previous paintings had made it a habit, she began painting smaller, more detailed, less spontaneous, black and white paintings.
She married artist Gordon Cook in 1968. Although the two artists appeared to be very different, they respected and inspired each other's work. Brown returned to using color in her paintings once more. At this moment, her paintings were created for self-reflection. She retained her approach as figurative and representational, but she shifted her attention more metaphorically. This had to do with several recent events in her life, including the deaths of both of her parents. In her art, her obsession with cats began to emerge. She began including more animals and more symbolsism than she had expected.
Brown created autobiographical works based on actual and imagined events in the 1970s. She competed in amateur tournaments and swam in the first women's Golden Gate swim in San Francisco Bay. She joined the University of California's Berkeley teaching art in 1974. When a passing freighter swamped the group in 1975, she and a group of others almost drowned during a swim to Alcatraz Island. The self-portrait was included in her paintings based on her experience at the Alcatraz Swim #3.
Brown created several self-portraits. Although all of her paintings were personal and tied into their specific events of her life, her self-portraits made her paintings even more personal. Not only were they fitting to her life, but they also tied her self-portraits to some of her other paintings. She created this series of self-portraits to represent her thoughts and emotions. She painted After the Alcatraz Swim in 1975 to help her prevent nearly drowning in the San Francisco Bay from Alcatraz Island.