Walking in Two Worlds:
The Art of Jerry Brown

January 26–March 2, 2007

About the Show

It is intrinsic to all art that it conveys elements of culture in its creation. Language gives shape to culture and art is the language of creation. Evidence of cultural content can range from benign innocence (Folk Art) to self-conscious formality (Modernism), and hyperbolic irreverence (Post-Modernism). Native American art is no exception to this interpretive rule. Too often, we expect cultural content in Native American art to manifest as a folk narrative. Certainly, the art market supports this, and Indian artists find little pressure to step beyond their historic precedents.

When a Native artist is constantly prodded to choose a cultural platform, instead of a creative one, the pressure to articulate their experience in common, even cliché, cultural images looms large. The question of what makes Indian Art “Indian” compounds the responsibility among Native artists to achieve artistic authenticity. The socio-economic issue of expressing heritage in one culture—for the marketplace of another—hyper-sensitizes both artist and viewer to their respective expectations.

In this culturally politicized climate, the question of creative integrity promotes dualistic approaches; should an artist choose cultural or artistic idioms, personal or historic iconography to be true to their art? Should they be an “Indian” artist or an artist that is Indian? Add to this the inherent issues facing every artist of evolving the best fitting visual strategies—narrative, expressionistic, metaphoric, abstract, etc.—and you will quickly empathize with the challenges and successes of Jerry Brown’s paintings.

Brown, a Navajo painter making fearless forays into the abstract tradition, brings a sense of will to the cultural and creative challenge of shaping himself as an artist who walks in two worlds. His strength of conviction as a tribal member of the Diné, and as a painter in the contemporary non-native world, allow him to trace a pathway that balances integrated stylistic strategies and cultural expression. When asked about the cultural content in his painting, he replies: “I use pattern, texture, and color in my paintings to communicate what I see and experience everyday.” It is a choice made without the encumbrance of irony or apology. Brown states simply, “It is how I choose to tell the story of my life, my culture.”

Using a variety of mixed media to add dimension to his acrylic on canvas paintings, the artist has elected to work in an intimate format, in canvases that are well within the size and scale of the human body. This compels the viewer to approach the paintings as you might approach a person in conversation to take in the (visual) story.

In the painting entitled “Balance”, viewed at arm’s length, a diaphanous glow of motion animates the surface of the canvas in a tour-de-force of paint—sure, quick strokes of colored lines crisscross with certainty, piercing the layered depth. As a painter, he is an impassioned speaker. The contrast of a triad of blue elements, heighten the heat of the warm palette that falls behind the figurative rendering of a hummingbird. This out-scaled, literal image, nearly camouflaged against the torrent of brushstrokes behind it, casts a wavering shadow against a luminous field of colors. Its figurative rendering is successful; yet, most importantly, it imparts a sense of motion that seems to be reiterated by the abstract ground behind it. “Which is more hummingbird in essence”, it seems to ask, “the rendered image—or its background of frenetic motion and balance?” Both seem to readily convey the essence of the subject, while the object (the image of the bird) suggests a willingness to forgo its presence as a logo and become at one with the background. With this one signature canvas, the viewer is armed by the artist with a visceral sense of the painter’s approach to the world. Applying this knowledge, it is as if all other abstract canvases can now be understood for their completeness. It is no surprise that this is the sole canvas in this exhibit portraying a literal figure. As viewers, it is our gateway to the artist’s view of the world. Once in, the literal figure is no longer required.

This idea, that the essence of the world of nature, so fundamental to Navajo cosmology, can be encoded in the action of applying pure color and line, enables the artist’s expression of culture to go beyond the confines of cliché imagery and expected narratives. Brown’s work seems to insist that nature, at its essence, is the foundation of art, the root of his “awareness” as a Diné, and the common language of every culture’s understanding of itself.

—Martin Kim

(Martin Kim is the former manager of Native Goods Art Gallery and the Native Goods Museum Store)

Artist's Statement