John Brown
"John Brown" by Betty Ann Jordan, Spring 2007, p. 110
Forensic pathologists must search for clues in telltale paint fragments, clothing fibres, chemical residues. The Toronto painter John Brown similarly investigates trauma at close range in highly sophisticated paintings that are about damage and its aftermath. The overall impression is of serious inquiry; he scrapes at the fleshy bits, determined to isolate root causes. Brilliant painterly effects ranging from the scabrous to the delicate parallel a surgeon’s use of brute force or gentle pressure as necessary. These life-affirming works were executed over many months and clearly took stamina. In seven large pictures, Brown deploys masterful techniques—his vast repertoire of expressive, multidirectional marks of myriad consistencies is wonderful. The colour palette is corporeal and earthy with blues and greens thrown in for dramatic relief. That his works bear enigmatic titles postdated far into the future (October 13, 2082, for example) is a conundrum that is best puzzled out by each viewer as he or she sees fit. At the very least, Brown is intimating the long view.
The closest Brown gets to narrative is in the seven-by-six-foot July 23, 2037. The background is an airy robin’s-egg blue, while in the middle ground is a white cloud pierced by a loosely cruciform pattern of wine-red marks that are triangular and dripping, suggestive of punctures made by a switchblade. In July 8, 2046, a red fog hovers over a wonky grid like a ravaged city seen from on high. A burned-out section abuts a smaller tarry-black area, the pigment novelly replicating the herringbone texture of worsted woollen cloth, forming a tactile patch. An irregular white miasma in November 14, 2077, a painting that would seem to be about aural stimuli, engulfs eccentric vertical bars the shape of pan pipes, the latter executed in shades of oxide red, grey and brown. The pigment in a grey section on the far left side is raspy, like a sound you’d rather not hear.
A still-coalescing cloud in the centre of March 19, 2074, the most playful and spacey of all of the paintings, suggests particles of a living entity being teleported. Amid flurries of staccato-painted Y- and L-shaped marks and cursive lines in rosy, lipsticky hues there appears to be a pink bit of ear, a fragment of soft belly skin and a piece of reconstituting tongue. Another case closed.
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