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Portsmouth Herald: Sunday June 06, 2010
Great Bay Art Association Exhibit at the Discover Portsmouth Center, Portsmouth, NH
| Every elementary school art teacher will tell you, there is always a "horse kid." It doesn't matter if the school is in the country where kids ride horses daily or in the city where most kids have never ridden; there is always a horse kid. This student draws horses, paints horses, fashions them out of clay. Even when drawing a still life of a vase with flowers, somehow a pattern of running horses ends up on the vase. Well, Denise Brown was that horse kid. Brown was lucky enough to grow up next to a horse farm in Rye. "I grew up near horses," says Brown, "I took riding lessons and drew them while sitting in the field. I observed their structure and anatomy, I watched their movements." Brown has loved to draw and sketch all of her life. "In grade school my art teacher pushed me, I was known as the 'horse artist.'" In high school Brown didn't take art classes but rediscovered her passion when she took an art elective while attending the University of New Hampshire. She went on to graduate from the University of New Hampshire with a self-designed major in Fine Art, Commercial Art and Marketing. She has run her own business Ad-cetera for the past 30 years where she works as a graphic designer and photographer. Brown is a versatile artist who does a lot of commissioned portraits of pets, houses and businesses. She was commissioned to paint New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch's house as a gift to his family. She has made notecards, wine labels, T-shirts and produces a coloring book series called "Ted the Cat." Still, horses have never left Brown. "I have strived to become a master of painting the horse," she says. She is currently working on a series called "Horse Power." "I am continually surprised at how many harnesses there are, there are hundreds of them. All the harnesses show the power of the horse and how mankind has worked with the horse to build what we have today," Brown explains, "I go to sleep and wake up thinking about what needs to be done on the horse to make it look alive and ready to jump off the canvas." Brown's artistic goal is to become a nationally known equine artist. Vandy Duffy is a teaching artist and storyteller. She can be contacted by e-mail: areaarts@yahoo.com. |
Copyright © 2007 Raccoon Studios & Denise Brown. All Rights Reserved.
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No items on this web site can be reproduced without the expressed and written consent of the artist.