1993

Paramount Award  

Winner of the 1993 Paramount Award
Jeff BROWN
Untitled
Oil on metal
2400 x 2400 mm
Collection of the James Wallace Arts Trust

Jeff Brown

Jeff Brown’s work is characterized by the ‘application of strong, highly keyed colour to a variety of surfaces’.(1) Elements of tribal and totemic art are evident in Brown’s work. He experiments with surface and his uniquely unsteady application of line gives his forms a drawn, natural look. Brown uses colour strongly to block in, dissect, and level out busy areas within the works. The Legacy Jeff Brown has inherited is simple – subject matter is subordinate to the essential demands of painting itself. Brown’s concern is primarily with the physical nature of paint, the properties of colour, surface and surround. Like Fowler and Woollaston, he ‘builds’ a painting. His work is free of literary and social connotation.

Brown’s work has been influenced by New Zealand artists such as Toss Wollaston and Philip Trusttum (the James Wallace Arts Trust having the largest collection of both of these artists) of whom Brown believes he shares a common view…

“Like Wollaston and Trusttum I think I have a very individual belief in art, I’ve purposely taken myself out of the mainstream to work, so I can just get on with it.” ( 2)

(1) New Works 1992, National Art Gallery and Museum.

(2) Jeff Brown, New Works 1992, National Art Gallery and Museum.