Brown & Brown

Artists’ talk: Wednesday, March 16, 2016 
6:00 - 7:30 p.m.: free by RSVP to the Continuing Education Office at 215-972-7632 or online

Will Brown and Emily (Scott) Brown met as students in PAFA's coordinated BFA program. Though they have shared many projects, they do not collaborate on their art work. This is the first time the Browns, who divide their time between Philadelphia and Montville, Maine, have shown together.

Will Brown has had a long career photographing art, artifacts and architectural spaces. The Picture that Remains, a book featuring his photographs from the 1970s and poems by Thomas Devaney, was published in 2014. He is represented by Laurence Miller Gallery, New York.

Schooled in painting at PAFA, Will Brown is a self-taught photographer. His early 1970s photography was rediscovered in 2009 and shown as part of an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. A feature followed in 2014 in The New York Times. Most recently, his focus has been on photographing horse troughs, springs, bramble and other subjects.

Emily Brown has painted en plein air for decades and bases much of her art work on commonly experienced textures and surfaces in the natural world, using a variety of materials, formats, scales, sizes and papers. She discusses her work in a video interview here.

Ranging in height from 15 to 50 inches, most of her drawings in the exhibition are ink wash: a material which has fascinated the artist for 20 years. Several incorporate line etchings; one includes words by William Penn, while another features a horse and rider in motion as photographed by Eadweard Muybridge. A freestanding piece, a 6-foot Sonotube, celebrates the Schuykill Waterworks.

Emily Brown currently teaches in the Continuing Education department at PAFA. To take a class with her, click here.