Unspoken Epiphanies - An Artbook by Mark Brown
Introductory essay by Hearne Pardee
Photography by Mark Brown, Cathy Kiffney & Peter Geoffrion
Book & cover design by Maxine Mills
Publication Date: June 1, 2020
11" x 7.5", 60 pages
Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-937968-64-9
Chapel Hill artist Mark Brown, a much celebrated, widely collected, very private painter, lives deep in the woods… In the studio behind his house, he paints large, meditative, deeply saturated abstract works, many on distinct lozenge-shaped canvases and panels of birch… Curators and critics have compared his work to Mark Rothko and Frank Stella… Brown’s work reflects a distinct interiority, and aims to inspire a similar contemplativeness in its viewer.
—Liza Roberts,Art of the State, University of North Carolina Press
The paintings reproduced in Mark Brown’s new monograph Unspoken
Epiphaniesbroaden the artist’s longstanding commitment to abstraction, expanding the genre by combining informed examinations of the legacy of Abstract Expressionism with the reductive qualities of Minimalism. Referencing such diverse influences as late Roman wall frescoes, Tantric painting and mid-twentieth century non-objective art, these new works signal a unique and potent development in contemporary abstract painting.
60 pages with full color reproductions. Includes the original essay "Beginnings" by artist and critic Hearne Pardee.
“Working freehand, Brown brings a sense of touch to the formal precision of
geometric abstraction. As an alternative to modernism’s relentless logic, he
proposes a slow, meditative practice of gestural improvisation that resists
analysis.”
—Hearne Pardee, painter, professor and critic, Unspoken Epiphanies
monograph essay
“Mark Brown steals the show with his subtly compelling abstract paintings… His labored, obsessively reworked canvases with thick impastos and dripping paint eloquently express the act of painting. This emphasis on seductive, tactile surfaces results in dense, concentrated and powerful works…beautifully painted surfaces…held together by tightly composed geometric forms.”
—Linda Johnson Dougherty, Chief Curator, North Carolina Museum of Art
“A contemporary answer to such pillars of 20th century painting as Mark Rothko and Frank Stella, Mark Brown’s paintings defy the easy application of outside narratives. His paint application and mark-making brings viewers continually back to the present moment.”
—Shana Dumont Garr, Curator, Fruitlands Museum, Harvard, MA
“…serious and disciplined, Mark Brown’s sober, architectural blocks of astutely adjusted color pulsate…”
—Katy Kline, Director, Bowdoin Museum of Art
“Working freehand, Brown brings a sense of touch to the formal precision of
geometric abstraction. As an alternative to modernism’s relentless logic, he
proposes a slow, meditative practice of gestural improvisation that resists
analysis.”
—Hearne Pardee, painter, professor and critic, Unspoken Epiphanies
monograph essay
Transforming himself from backwater miscreant to closet human, Mark Brown resumed painting after a brief career as a photographer. Among his grants and scholarships are the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, the Artists Fellowship, the Vermont Studio Center, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Kent State University. He was a finalist for a National Endowment for the Arts grant in painting. He has worked with galleries and art dealers in New York, Atlanta, Santa Monica, Philadelphia, Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Raleigh and Chapel Hill. He taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Kentucky State University and the Waterworks
Visual Arts Center. He saws and splits dead trees for firewood to heat his passive solar home, practicing Zen meditation and the martial art Kajukenbo daily. He lives and works outside Chapel Hill, NC with his wife, artist Cathy Kiffney.