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Dick Brown has a Ph.D in Counseling Psychology and co-owns Apex Counseling Center, LLC in Baltimore (link at the bottom of the page). He was taught ceramics by Marcus Duyon at Jackson State University (see bottom of page). He has had extensive formal training from Charlie Boren in Texas (see bottom of page) in wood carving and learned the art of bronze casting at Prince George's Community College (Maryland). Brown is self taught as a painter, stained glass, and mosaic artist. He sees himself as an "outsider/visionary" artist due to his lack of art school training, uncensored creativity and compulsive need to "make art." At times his work has been controversial (and censored) because of the religious nature of certain pieces. Brown stays engaged with art by using a variety of mediums. Besides painting with oils, watercolors, shoe polish, and acrylics, he has used colored and graphite pencils, pen and ink, and pastels and charcoal. He has made styrofoam, linoleum and wood block prints, collages, photographs, and multi media sculptures. He also mixes mediums. For example, his publically commissioned sculpture, "Bluebird of Happiness" (re-named by Rebecca Hoffberger - original title was "Outsider Bluebird") is part of the permanent collection of the American Vision Art Museum (AVAM- link at the bottom of the page) in Baltimore. The bluebird was partially covered with mosaics and then painted. The sculpture was chosen from AVAM's permanent collection to be part of Bergdorf's (NYC) showroom 2009 holiday window display. The bluebird is also pictured in the coffee table book OUTDOOR SCULPTURE IN BALTIMORE by Cindy Kelly. Brown, on April 17, 2017, completed the first paintsaic, an original art form called "Paintsaics," a term coined by his youngest daughter, Caroline, also a mosaic artist. He has another daughter (Kristin) who lives in Texas. Felicia Zannino-Baker calls the paintsaics "Fragmented Canvases." Brown creates a paintsaic by cutting up (disassembling) certain original works he painted at least 25 years earlier and reassembles the pieces into a unified whole. He cuts at least 5 or 6 canvases into pieces like those in an unassembled puzzle and glues each piece to a concrete backer board. He created another original art form using Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) cards as canvases. He embellished the TAT cards he used while performing psychological assessments of hospitalized psychiatric patients. Brown took the TAT cards and added his own inner projections to the cards (see the "Mystery Cards" gallery) using various mediums including drawing, collage, stamping, and painting. Talk about projection...The resulting work is not for sale due to copyright laws. Brown recently asked his grandaughter what artist inspired her and she replied, "You." Carly then asked him who was he inspired by and he said, "Picasso." Her response was, "Everyone is inspired by Picasso." Pretty cool response from an 8 year old! Brown rails against attempts to teach creativity because the teaching stifles and interferes with the drive to create. Education about materials and techniques are important but information that attempts to impart to an artist what constitutes "good art" impedes the creative process. Artists can not be taught creativity and originality: they either have it or they don't. Brown describes his body of work as MODERN RELIGIOUS NEOIMPRESSIONISM. Modern because we are in the 21st century; religious because much of the work has both overt and veiled references to spirituality (religion); and neoimpressionism because it is new and modified. |
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