Holiday Pop Up Sale!

I am excited to be joining forces with Leiper’s Creek Gallery to raise money and awareness for Nashville Mutual Aid Collective, a local grassroots organization that raises funds and other resources for the emergency needs of individuals in the Nashville area. Sunday, December 17, 1–4pm.

We have gathered a selection of my smaller paintings (and a couple larger ones) which we will be offering to you at 30% off. Perfect for gift giving!

See below for a preview of some of the paintings that will be included. A portion of each of these paintings sold will go to this deserving organization.

Pre-sales welcome! For inquiries and pricing please contact Amy Smith and Lisa Fox at https://leiperscreekgallery.com/contact.

Leiper's Creek Gallery is located at 4144 Old Hillsboro Rd, Franklin, TN 37064.

PH: 615/599-5102

Down By the Station, 12x12 Acrylic

Contact: https://leiperscreekgallery.com/contact

A Chick Thing, 12x14 Oil

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Autumn Light, 11x14 Oil

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Hills & Valley, 10x12 Acrylic

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Barns At Snow Creek, 12x12 Acrylic

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On a Country Road, 11x14 Oil

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Roamin’ Holiday, 24x24 Oil

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Marketing, 11x14 Oil

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Outdoor Seating, 12x12 Acrylic & Oil

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Light & Shadow, 12x14 Oil

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Reflecting, 12x12 Acrylic

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In the Field, 10x12 Acrylic

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Autumn Shadows, 8x10 Oil

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Summer’s End, 10x10 Acrylic

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Southern Town 12x12 Acrylic

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In the Distance 6x8 Oil

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Piers, 8x10 Oil

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Impending Storm, 6x8 Oil

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By the Tracks, 12x12 Oil

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Autumn Color, 6x8 Oil

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Long View, 10x12 Oil

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Summer’s End 24x24 Acrylic & Oil

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Umami

Salty, sweet, bitter, sour…all the elements of a perfect culinary masterpiece. 

I am a former chef and now an avid home cook. I always pay close attention to the balance of flavors in my cooking. This gets me thinking…what about the elements of a balanced painting?  How do you achieve that balance?  For me a successful painting must include good design, spot-on values, expressive brushwork, and harmonious color. But there is something else in the mix, a fifth element that makes our paintings unique to us. Let’s equate that with the elusive and often overlooked fifth element of taste…Umami.

Umami is that savory, meaty flavor found in such foods as mushrooms, soy sauce, and good Parmesan cheese. Though this mysterious flavor had been known for centuries, it wasn’t identified until 1908, when Japanese researcher Kikunae Ikeda isolated the taste. I think Umami is unique and sometimes elusive, just like that “je na sais quoi” that makes our paintings powerful and not just correct.  

Very much like your handwriting is yours and yours alone, no one can paint exactly like you.  Every time you paint something, you are experiencing a certain mood, your brushwork is uniquely yours, and your vision and creativity is culled from your mind and experiences. No one else has all of those things. Only you. But what if you could inject “you-mami” into each and every painting?

To do this, it is necessary to practice the fundamentals so that you become “unconsciously competent” in the words of Abraham Maslow. That just means painting is intuitive and you don’t even have to think about it, it just comes naturally. Once this happens, let the Umami begin. This came true for me after many, many years of practicing the foundational work of building a painting. I can’t put my finger on when, but one day like a lightening bolt, I was slapping down paint in an expressive way with brushwork unique to me. Color-mixing seemed effortless. My paintings started to be in line with artists I had long admired for their juicy paint strokes and luminous color. The highest compliment I have recently received was from an admired artist who said, “I always know your work immediately. No one paints like you.” I was thrilled to the bone. 

I encourage you to learn and practice the elements that go into making a successful painting. Solid beginnings usually end up in successful endings. Learn the salty, sweet, bitter, and sour. Then you’ll eventually and surely be able to taste the Umami. 

https://anneblairbrown.com/workshops-and-mentoring

"Acrylic Demo" Online Demonstration!

I am excited to team up with The Ohio Art Center to present an Online Demo: “Acrylic Painting”. I’ll be showing the ins and outs of using this versatile medium and sharing tips I’ve discovered to create dynamic marks and textures. Sign up info below!

Price: $55.00 U.S.D.

Date: January 26th 2024
(Friday)

Times: 11:00am to 1:30pm
Eastern Standard Time

The demo is live and recorded.

You will receive the link to the recorded demo 24 to 48 hours after it has been completed.

Learn more at:
www.theohioartcenter.com

Winter 2024 Online Classes and Workshops

Solvent-Free Painting

In the past two years I have started to move away from solvents in my studio.  I still use oils a lot, the water soluble kind, but I also use acrylics a good deal in both my plein air and studio work.  The benefit of the fast drying qualities of this medium is huge when traveling and when out in the field.  I don’t need another piece of equipment with me in order to transport wet paintings…with fast drying mediums my painting is already dry and ready to toss in the backseat of the car or suitcase.  It has become my goal to remove the cloud of inferiority that seems to be attached to acrylics as being paint only worthy of craft projects.  In fact, I pose a friendly challenge to you to be able to tell the difference between one of my oil paintings and one of my acrylic paintings.

My foray into painting with acrylic began innocently enough. I needed to get moving on a painting, but was behind schedule.  I had a few tubes of acrylic lying around in the studio and decided that painting my initial underpainting with acrylic would eliminate the drying time usually needed before I proceeded with the next step, and it did!  In fact I started to do that more and more with a newly expanded palette of acrylic paints.  Then I took them into the field and now I use them quite often in all aspects of my work.  They help me most with painting larger works, something I struggle with.  The fast drying time of acrylics allows me to get that look of spontaneity in a larger piece that I might fail to get if I had all this extra drying time to smoosh the paint about. 

I’m excited to demonstrate my process of “going big” at the Plein Air Convention next May 20–24 and hopefully open eyes to the the joys and benefits of painting with acrylics. I’m also excited about my upcoming online workshop, “Solvent-Free Painting”, with Trey Finney. We’ll discuss and demonstrate acrylic painting as well as explore Gouache and water soluble oils. Click here for more info: https://anneblairbrown.com/workshops-and-mentoring/category/color-amp-light-gpg3m-hj7r5-9mn25

I ASKED FOR WONDER: Group Exhibition

I ASKED FOR WONDER: Group Exhibition
September 1 - 22
Opening Reception: Friday, September 1, 5 - 8pm

"I did not ask for success. I asked for wonder."  The artists in this group show — Anne Blair Brown, Christopher St. Leger, and Marissa Vogl — find wonder in the everyday, from often overlooked structures to a pot of purple flowers to the way leaves on a tree can appear to be a thousand different shades of green.

To see the artwork in this exhibition before anyone else, request a preview by emailing katie@meyervogl.com. 

"Seaside Cottage" Going To American Impressionist Society National Exhibition & Sale

The American Impressionists Society’s (AIS) 24th National Juried Exhibition this year is being held at Somerville Manning Gallery, Greenville, Delaware, Aug 3- Sept 2, 2023. I am so honored to be designated AIS Master, among so many other artist I admire. This organization promotes American Impressionism and provides exhibition opportunities to all of their artist members by partnering with galleries across the country to produce quality art exhibitions.

Water, Water Everywhere

The last couple of years I have been on a course of exploration as a means of giving less information and more impact in my paintings. I look at abstract art and I think, “how do they do that?”. I don’t necessarily want to be an abstract painter by definition, but I wonder, “How do they make up all that cool stuff?” How do I/we do this? Well, the first step is getting out of the comfort zone and trying new things. 

If you know my work or have taken a workshop from me, you know I always try to use bigger brushes than I’m comfortable with, try new mediums such as Gouache and Acrylics, and just try to think outside the box and not stick to a formula. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly think having a specific method to practice and sticking to it for a time is extremely beneficial (which I’ve done), but once you do that, what’s next? One of the best ways I found to get even looser in my oil paintings is to play with Gouache. I emphasize the word “play”.

In the painting above, I started by just staining kept adding wet stains in shape form…no lines, no drawing. Not a lot of planning (which I am big on but sometimes ya gotta just go for it). It was a little scary because I might have gotten the placement wrong, but the great thing about Gouache is that you can just go right over it because it dries so fast! I love Gouache for that reason and also its staining ability, but also because I feel like I’m in kindergarten when I’m painting with it! I have a separate desk in my studio, away from my big, intimidating easel. When I sit down to paint, I try to explore without worrying about the outcome. Stains, blooms, dry brush, wet-in-wet…so many possibilities. I make these sessions quick, without trying to perfect the painting. I just get color notes as if I were outside painting plein air. This helps keep me loose and I come up with strokes and colors that I probably wouldn’t have come up with if I was just painting with oils. Then, that free-painted fun li’l color study becomes sole reference for a larger acrylic or oil painting. I’ve been working this way for a while, and it’s really paying off. 

Each and every time I do a Gouache painting, I learn something new about the medium. I also always feel something different. Liberating!

I’ll be showing this painting in demo form this March in an upcoming 4-part demo series with water media specialist, Trey Finney (he’s also my fiancee as of this writing. :-)). I’ll also use the Gouache as sole reference for a larger painting in a second demo. In the 4-total demos, Trey and I share our passion for Gouache, Acrylics, and Water Soluble Oils. Solvent free painting is quite liberating, especially if you travel or paint outside. We’ll show you the flexibility and versatility of using any or all of these three mediums in your painting practice, how they can enhance your creativity and “playtime” in and out of the studio, and how they can inform all genres of painting. 

Click here for more info! https://anneblairbrown.com/workshops-and-mentoring/category/color-amp-light-gpg3m-hj7r5