Nick Brown

Portrait by: Gene Sasse 2012

I was introduced to the arts at an early age by my grandma and self-taught oil painter Jean K. Brown. She instructed me on the concepts of light, shadow, form, and depth, as well as appreciating the natural world around me. I pursued my art through high school and junior college and then to the University of Redlands, where I majored in fine art, emphasizing in drawing and painting. It was at the U of R where I first utilized my voice as an artist and fell in love with the ability to say whatever you needed to say however you needed to say it.

My most recent body of work is an attempt to grab-hold of my roots in California’s Central Valley, a landscape made up of people, cities, and agriculture saturated with intrigue and coated with a beautiful grit. At the moment, a group of oil studies and finished paintings on canvas and panel, “California Heart” is an attempt to give those outside of the valley as well as those who call it home, a moment to see the Valley through my eyes. Very much influenced by the impressionist’s ability to transcend the constraints of realism, ironically, I also gravitate to the beautiful, honest moments captured by the American realist Bo Bartlett.

© 2015 Inland Empire Museum of Art
All Art © by The Artist