Notes on Painting

Geometric Abstraction

Henry Brown works with a reduced vocabulary of geometry and a limited color selection 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. His reductive aesthetic intensifies what is essential to his painting process, resulting in abstractions that are direct and conceptually driven.

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. The schematics and outlines are redrawn on the gessoed canvas and sealed in. Brown paints his imagery and leaves the white ground and underdrawings exposed as a visible part of the finished paintings.

Perception

Brown’s imagery appears to be fixed spatially, but visual perception triggers sensations of movement. Depth shifts as surfaces advance and recede. His images simultaneously establish an illusion of three-dimensionality and flatten the picture plane. Henry Brown animates his surfaces with changing spatial relationships that pull the viewer into his paintings.

Layering

His paintings and abstract imagery are constructed through physical layering. Henry Brown maps out a geometric underdrawing directly on the gessoed canvas and then paints the images on the surface. He leaves portions of the white ground and underdrawing unpainted, integrating these process layers into the final composition. In the finished paintings, geometric imagery in the foreground is set against the white gesso and underdrawing in the background. This figure-ground relationship establishes pictorial layering. Brown layers his space through both the physical act and optical effect.