Notes on Painting
Reductive Geometric Abstraction
Henry Brown works with a stripped-down vocabulary of geometry and flat uniform color in his abstract paintings. Close inspection of Brown’s surfaces reveals a network of ruled lines and compass-drawn circles that form the underlying structure of his hard-edge images. He reinterprets the stable language of geometry to make paintings that shift between literal and pictorial space. Brown’s reductive aesthetic intensifies what is essential to his painting process, resulting in abstractions that are direct and conceptually driven.
Unconcealed History
In Henry Brown’s abstractions, the geometric underdrawing generates the painted image. The unpainted portions of the drawing are visible evidence of a prior state that Brown has partially preserved in the finished composition. This creates an additional level of information behind the image, and together these layers form a comprehensive unit of meaning. The drawn geometry is also the framework for what the painting will become. The painting is the accumulation of its unconcealed history.
White Ground
Brown constructs compass-and-ruler underdrawings on the white ground to produce his hard-edge images. He leaves areas of the white layer and its drawing unpainted as part of the completed work. The exposed material ground of the canvas becomes the illusory ground against which the painted image is set, establishing pictorial space. As a visual element in the completed work, the white ground combines the physical process of making with the painting's optical effect in viewing.
Drawing
His abstract paintings are derived from thumbnail sketches drawn to work out ideas and imagery. From the sketches he develops drawings to scale on paper tacked to the wall. In these, Henry Brown uses compass and ruler to create schematic underdrawings and image outlines for his paintings. Each canvas is laid flat on saw horses like a drafting table. The schematics and outlines are redrawn on the gessoed surface and sealed in. Brown paints his imagery and leaves the white ground and underdrawings exposed in the paintings.
Spatial Paradox
Henry Brown’s abstractions are built on fixed geometry that refuses to stay fixed. His flat paintings suggest three-dimensional depth as surfaces advance and recede. The picture plane does not resolve into a stable form, forcing the eye to oscillate between competing spatial interpretations. Brown simultaneously constructs and destabilizes his own systems. He subverts illusionism with structural elements that flatten the surface, while his rigid geometric framework keeps the image in flux. Through this paradox, the work becomes a perceptual event that expands beyond its initial reading.
Interpretation of Space
He repurposes the stable language of geometry to create multiple representations of space that exist simultaneously. Spatial interpretation occurs when viewing the work over time and never settles into a single rendition. Multiple readings compete, each supported by the same formal structure. One reading does not eliminate another. These interpretations remain continuously accessible as the viewer moves between both literal and pictorial space.
Intermediary Processes
Henry Brown uses an intermediary process at each stage of the painting’s development. Brown works with geometric systems or symmetrical patterns to draw a schematic and outline for the image. The schematic refines his idea into the resulting image which is then painted. He draws with compass and ruler; the tools mediate the process by rendering the circles, arcs, and straight lines. Outlines formed by the schematic drawing determine the area that is painted in. Unmodulated color and hard edges define its aesthetic. Agency is distributed: choices made and the effect of intermediaries determine the outcome.
Opposition
- figure / ground
- static / flux
- literal / pictorial
- materiality / illusionism
- mechanical / freehand
- system / intuition
- structure / sensation
- painting-as-object / painting-as-experience