A collection of unseen drawings and works on paper. Supported by paintings and silkscreen, lino and wood cuts.
Drawing was for William Brown an integral part of his daily practice. In fact, he felt it to be an essential part of an artist’s life. He called it his thinking process.
William documented what most people ignore or fail to notice. He looked at the world around him like an explorer and an ethnographer. He was a storyteller who created a world of magic, drawing on and transforming everyday objects and experiences. His cast of players who regularly performed in all of his works were – bear, puffin, beaver, moose, were-wolf (the French Loup Garou), and horse (Trojan Horse and the Mari Lwyd). He drew from folk-lore, mythology and legends. The locations and settings were the places he visited – North Africa, Libya, the Barbary Coast, Northern Canada and the hills of Glamorgan in Wales.
William’s drawing tools were what was at hand – graphite stick, charcoal, a child’s thick Woody coloured pencil or a dipping pen and ink. He worked on discarded papers and card, but also used fine Ingres and Fabriano watercolour papers. His paintings, whether very large or small, were full of glorious vibrant colour. His work was eloquent and playful, child like and feisty.
“Drawn with the vigour and dash of a Picasso and painted in colours to make Matisse pale, the visual onslaught of his imagery was unstoppable.” Laura Gascoigne, art critic, From Under The Bed 2009, The Art Shop.
“William Brown triumphantly achieved Picasso’s ambition of drawing like a child.” Laura Gascoigne, The Independent July 2008.
William Brown was born in 1953 in Toronto, Canada and died in Glamorgan, South Wales in 2008.
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