The Early Years -
Bruce Brown's Work
in Crayon, Pencil, Watercolor and Oil

IF I HADN'T won the annual scholarship the Seattle Times awarded to the best young journalist in the State of Washington in 1969, I'm certain I would have become an artist.

I drew from my earliest years and when I was still a child, my mother, Marian Brown, made sure I was able to see the MOMA, Whitney, Guggenheim, Met, National Gallery, Cochran, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Seattle Art Museum, etc.  

"Three Saplings in the Snow," a 1984 meditation in graphite on adoption and the essential nature of young things that I drew for my ex-wife, Lane Morgan, when we were about to adopt our first daughter.


By the time I was in high school at the Lakeside School in Seattle, I was already selling my paintings to fellow students and their parents.

Journalism and writing in general took over when I started college, but I never lost my love of art or completely quit producing an occasional piece. Most of these paintings and sketches are lost to me now (as most young artists' work is lost to them). However, a few grizzled survivors are pictured below.

These pieces are representative of my early work, I think, in that my favored medium was always pencil. (Perhaps this is why I found digital media so attractive -- it essentially allows the pencil to simulate every other type of media, and mix them in ways that are impossible with traditional media.) 

Looking at these pieces, though, I'm sorry I don't have any of my oils to show. I particularly wish I had a painting of a red candle on the window ledge of Rondi Johnson and my Queen Anne Hill apartment in Seattle that I painted late one night in 1974. 

As I recall, I traded it to a Tacoma friend named John Terrien for a Fairport Convention album called "Unhalfbricking." Haven't seen John, the painting or the album in 30 years. Another lost night...

-- B.B.


Sketchbook:

Legacy Media

Artwork by Bruce Brown

Dream Moon
a watercolor that I painted for Marilyn Lewis in 1987

italy_still.jpg (17133 bytes)

Nectarine and Knife
a pencil sketch I made for my daughter Shanna in Passignano, Italy, in 1998 

Tassling Corn
a pencil sketch of Walt VanHuis's corn field in Sumas, with the trees along the river and mountains beyond

Detail of Tassling Corn
I sketched this July 1998 scene standing in the driveway in Sumas in about ten minutes

Mountain in the Clouds Field Journal
a page from my original 1979 field notes showing a male pink salmon, or humpy


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