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Daniel
Brown at work in his studio.
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“One of
the first things I recall doing as a young boy,” says Dan Brown
of his earliest recollection of wanting to be an artist, occurred
when he was perhaps seven or eight years old. “I’d take a
pencil and paper and trace sports figures that I saw in newspapers
and magazines. I loved to sketch.”
And he did it often.
That love of drawing would eventually result in a
lucrative career that provided a comfortable living illustrating
for such diverse interests as Readers Digest to the Pentagon.
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But like most artists who have “made it” in
one area ¾ in his case it was his love of illustrating ¾ the process of redefining one’s goals for even
greater success and growth sometimes involves change. Dan Brown is an
artist who, today, sees himself at a crossroads. “Whenever my
illustration work was slow,” he says of his gradual decision to move
on to other mediums and subject matter, “I’d do some work in oils or
watercolor. My schedule was probably 80% illustration and 20% fine
art.” Enjoying both challenges, as an illustrator, then as an aspiring
gallery artist, he says he decided within the last year or so that he
“needed to make a choice. For the next two or three years I’m going
to paint almost exclusively in oils, and put my illustration work aside
for a while to see where it leads.”
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It has been
because of his success as an illustrator, work he still enjoys, and will
continue for selected clients with whom he has a longstanding business
relationship, that he has been able to branch out and try his hand at
gallery art.
But Brown’s career, like most successful artists,
began a little more modestly. It started with a natural, undeveloped raw
talent that he wanted to perfect.
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"#4
With Clementine", 25"x27", o/c,
© Daniel Brown
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With supportive
parents encouraging him along the way while he was still in grade
school, Brown traced and sketched, then sketched independently on his
own, continuing right through high school. It was while in high school
that his work attracted the attention of two art instructors who
recognized his obvious talent and keen interest in the field. According
to Brown, it was at this point in his life that he knew what he wanted
to be when he grew up ¾
an illustrator.
Focused on a
career, he understood that he had to do more to achieve what he wanted,
so while still in high school he enrolled in classes at both Syracuse
University and at the Everson Museum where he methodically refined his
skill.
College bound,
intent on making the most of his talent, he eventually ended up
attending The Paier School of Art in Connecticut.
“The Paire School is a very traditional
place,” Brown fondly recalls of the art education he received there.
“They made sure we knew all the basics: live model, cubes, blocks,
shadows, light, anatomy.” But art wasn’t his only interest, and
choices had to be made. While attending high school, for instance, he
thought for a time of pursing a career in professional baseball, where
he excelled on the field. “I figured that I was going to be either a
major league baseball player or an artist. It’s funny,” he recounts
of the day he made up his mind, “I knew that in order to pursue
something I really loved, I’d have to give up something I really
loved.” He put the high school ball and bat away, and took up the
brush and pencil at college.
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"Two
Eggs", 5" x 7", o/p
© Daniel Brown
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The path of
the illustrator:
Not only did college offer Brown the opportunity to
refine his skill as an artist, but the choice of what field to enter was
wide open to a young man of his talent. He chose the path of an
illustrator, he says, because of something that happened one day when
three successful businessmen came to address his class. “Illustrators
Mark English, Bernie Fuchs and Bob Heindel came to school and gave a
talk on a career in illustration,” Dan says with some humor as he
recalled how impressed he was with their obvious success and
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the way they dressed. “I looked at my teachers and
looked at these guys and thought there was no glamour in my teachers
being artists. I figured I’d be an illustrator. That’s where the
money was.”
To get there from
where he was, though, required some effort. To help pay for school and
supplies Brown worked part time evenings as a janitor at the school,
painting not on canvas but the sides of homes in summer months to
purchase needed art supplies. But during every other waking hour when he
had nothing else to occupy his mind, and even if he was occupied, he
never lost focus on what he wanted most: to be a successful illustrator.
He must have
chosen correctly, because for thirty years he has made a career and a
name for himself as one of the country’s top illustrators. With a
winter studio in New York City and a summer studio on Easter Long
Island, Brown calls the shots. His work includes such clients as Xerox,
RJ Reynolds, Disney and others. His wife, Betty, who represents 30
illustrators worldwide, represents him too, so he has an agent with a
vested interest in his success as well.
The path of
gallery artist:
Dan Brown’s interest in painting, what he calls his
20% effort, was beginning to pay off as well, he says. Drawing on the
inspiration of classical artists like Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer
Andrew Wyeth and illustrator/artist Thomas Hart Benton, Brown says he
wanted to paint in the realist tradition and create works that caught a
viewer’s eye. He explains the reaction he seeks this way:
“When something is going well and it’s flowing, I might stop
and say, ‘Wow!’ this painting is taking on a life of its own. This
really looks great.” That’s the response he seeks from those who
view his art. Whatever the intangible is, it must be working because the
“David Smith Gallery” on 79th Street, New York began
asking for some of his still life works.
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Brown says he
wants to produce a painting every two weeks. “I’m going to
try to produce between twenty and thirty paintings a year,” he
says of his new focus on producing gallery art. “I’ll be
painting the things that excite me visually and excite
collectors.” His focus for now is still life work, which he
says is always interesting but perhaps too mundane for his
style. “I can’t take still life and do anything with it that
hasn’t already been done,” he says of his method, “so
I’m going to take it and twist it a little to suit my
personality.”
Without
venturing toward the abstract, Brown says he wants “to
concentrate on the quirky, the off-beat, the mysterious and see
where it leads.”
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"In Carol's Closet", 13"x14",
o/c,
© Daniel Brown
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Of his gallery
art, he says he enjoys the feel of brush on canvas. “Oil on canvas,
it’s almost a sexual thing,” he says, explaining, “I love the way
the paint moves around on a canvas. It has a kind of life of its own.
Especially when you have a good size brush to move it around with.”
“My eye is now
reacting to things in natural light. I find myself by seeing what light
does to an object.”
Two of his
compositions that might help explain more clearly what he says is his
unique perspective on his work, are his watercolor, “Facing South”,
which consists of a sidelong glance at a sunlit window box of geraniums
hanging from a window on a weathered farmhouse. The painting is
traditional in every sense of the word, yet with its unique angular
focus and morning shadow set against an expertly drawn weathered
clapboard surface, a perfect subject for watercolor, incidentally, you
sense an artists who sees things a little differently, but not so much
so that it becomes obtuse to the viewer. And then there’s the more
playful, “Three Gents”, an oil painting. Here, the artist places
three Stetsons in pyramid formation on a shelf, set against dark brown
wallboard. Hmmmm? Yet, the detail, shadow and lighting work in a quirky,
offbeat, mysterious kind of way.
A promotional piece on the artist explains it best.
“With a deft stroke of his brush, Mr. Brown lends a sense of immediacy
and eloquence to his still lifes and landscapes. His enchanting
creations remind us all that life’s simple pleasures are waiting to be
savored and enjoyed.”
As for the
future, Dan Brown believes he would be content if he could “continue
doing the things that excite me and collectors.”
Well, one thing hasn’t changed, the appeal to collectors,
buyers, is, as was his first choice to be an illustrator, where the
monetary success for any gallery artists resides. Of this it seems
certain: his work is made of the kind of perfection that bespeaks a
successful outcome.
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