Betty Brown: Atlanta Contemporary

Betty Brown (1932-2011) lived in and around Jefferson, Georgia, where she raised three children and one of her six grandchildren. She began painting in the 1980s after running a clothing store for seven years and before that working with her husband, Tubby Brown, in his small grocery. When he sold the store, he began making unique furniture and sculptures that he enlisted Betty to paint, showing them at folk fairs and a few galleries in the southeast. But that wasn’t enough for Betty, who began applying the brushes to paper and then small, easel-sized canvases. Few ever saw them while she was still alive, but she continued for her own satisfaction.

The early ones showed her trepidation as she first drew out scenes with pencil and then colored them with pale watercolors. Sweet, gentle, and nuanced on thin paper, and framed in barnboard or whatever Tubby found at the local flea market.

But then she found acrylics and canvas. Color exploded into bright hues applied to scenes of houses, yards and fields populated with rows of produce and partially picked cotton; families fishing, camping or swimming at the shore; football and baseball games crowded with fans; snowfalls, summers and autumn all rich with simplicity and grace.

Recognition came when Daniel Fuller, then curator at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, was struck by her personal sense of perspective, perception and color, while visiting a collector’s home. He organized a small show at the non-collecting institution, which has a vital role in Atlanta’s cultural landscape. Well-received, the exhibition was quickly followed by one-person shows at a gallery in Athens, Georgia and Various Small Fires in Los Angeles, with the High Museum and collectors from the US, Asia, and Europe acquiring her work and extending her reputation.