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Painter born in St Katherine, Jamaica, brought up in a strict religious household. He emigrated to Britain as a skilled carpenter and began to paint in 1973 after working at Sotheby’s auction house. Brown reckoned that if he could build he could also paint. He produced only a few pictures annually, topical subjects including the Spaghetti House Siege, the Grunwick Picket Line and the Royal Family. In 1978 he was commissioned by a newspaper group to paint the Notting Hill Festival and by the RA’s Edwin Abbey Trust. Brown took part in mixed shows of naïve painters in London, including the Olympia Jubilee Exhibition, 1977, the National Theatre, 1978, and the City of London Carnival, 1979. In that year George Melly bought Brown’s St James’s Park, a work of 1978, for the Arts Council, commenting: “The picture is as well dovetailed as a skilful piece of cabinet-making.

Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)


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