Ann-Marie Brown
Ann-Marie Brown is a Canadian artist working in encaustic and oil. She is currently working out of a studio on the west coast of B.C., in the company of rain & bears. Artist photograph by Krista Ockenden. Find Ann-Marie and her work at: annmariebrownpaintings.com
FEATURED ARTIST
My family has planted a forest garden in coastal British Columbia. The trees grow hazelnuts, walnuts, cherries, apples, pears, figs, plums, apricots, and sea buckthorn. There are blueberry, raspberry, gogi and gooseberry, along with grapes, and wildflowers on a lawn of clover.
Climate change has been a challenge with freak weather and unseasonal temperatures—drought last summer and floods this one.
I've been painting the fruits that do grow. Portraits of apples and plums, with as much attention paid to their individuality as I pay to my figure works.
Painting in a garden in a time of shifting ecologies is a celebration of resilience shadowed by knowledge. When Dutch painters in the 17th century painted fruit, they were in contemplation of the transience of human life, firm in the conviction that the eternal seasons would continue to unfold even as the eyes looking at the painting would turn to dust. To paint fruit now is to think about the ephemeral nature of all things, including the ecosystem. There is a qualitative difference in the sadnesses beneath the lustrous surfaces of historical and contemporary fruit paintings, with the latter propelling one towards an immediate engagement with the luminous life force shimmering in the present moment.
Ann-Marie Brown, British Columbia, 2022