Robert (Bob) Brown NEAC passed away on 1 June 2023. Read our tribute from his fellow NEAC Members.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Bob Brown always painted what excited him. It's what made him get out his brushes. He believed that people like the vitality or energy in a painting.
METHOD OF WORKING
As much as possible, Bob liked to paint on the spot, often using a sketchbook. He used his pochade box a great deal, particularly when travelling. This is a small, portable studio for painting in oil, in which he could carry up to a dozen panels. He found it essential to have a stool. He works up some of the studies in the studio where appropriate, and sometimes enlarged or develops them in some other way. He enjoyed working on groups of pictures at the same time, and to have them about him, so they could ‘talk’ to him and to each other.
Bob loved structures, facades, buildings, people, water, trees and huge skies. But patterns of light and colour are what he loved to paint. The sun reorders the world throughout the day, and gives different images, depending where the light and shadows fall.
BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS
Travelled with paintbox to Turkey, Syria, Iran, Greece, Georgia, France, Italy, Russia, US & China
1994 Elected Assistant Keeper of the New English Art Club
1963-1968 First studio at River Road, Littlehampton overlooking River Arun
1964 Elected member of the New English Art Club
1954 (aged 18) Still-life & self-portrait accepted for the RA Summer Exhibition
Studied at Croydon College of Art under Fred Dubery and Lionel Bulmer
OTHER SOCIETY MEMBERSHIPS
Small Paintings Group
SCHOLARSHIPS, AWARDS & PRIZES
Llewellyn Alexander prize at New English Art Club Open Exhibition
PAST EXHIBITIONS
2006 Italy, Oakham Gallery, St James, London; W.H. Patterson Fine Art, London
2003 Sinfield Gallery, Burford
1998 Beijing paintings, Mall Galleries
1997 Alresford Gallery
1996 Hellenic Cultural Institute, London
1995 ‘Britain in Greece’ Festival, Athens
1990 Churzee Studio Gallery
1989 Angelus Gallery, Winchester
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ARTWORKS
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Video interview with Bob Brown from 2013