Deborah Brown

Deborah Brown (27 September 1927 – 8 April 2023) was a Northern Irish sculptor.

Deborah Brown was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on 27 September 1927.

Brown was an only child who became fascinated with nature during childhood years spent in Cushendun in the Glens of Antrim.

Her grandmother is credited with encouraging her artwork and supplying her with paints and materials from a young age.

In 1934 her family moved to Cushendun into a house designed by Tom Henry, the brother of the painter Paul Henry.

Brown credited her Mother for instilling in her a love of animals, and along with the rural life of picking potatoes, cutting hay and turf, left an indelible mark on her work.

Brown had her first informal art lessons from James Humbert Craig who lived locally.

Brown was initially educated at Belfast Royal Academy and towards the end of the war she studied at Richmond Lodge School after the family had returned to Belfast.

She also received private lessons at Sydney Smith's studio in Belfast in 1944–45 when she was still at school.

In preparation for attending art college, Brown was instructed in art-history by James McCord.

Brown studied landscape painting at Belfast College of Art in 1946 under Romeo Toogood and Newton Penprase before enrolling at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin in 1947, to study painting for three years.

In Dublin she studied under Sean Keating, Maurice MacGonigal, Lucy Charles, and Professor Herkner who taught sculpture, and in addition she attended the National University under Françoise Henry to learn art-history.

Brown joined a group with artist and musician Michael Morrow and friends, where she played bass viol, having been classically trained in piano and cello at a young age.

After three years studying in Dublin she continued her studies in Paris, where she became interested in the primary colours of European Modernism.

Brown stayed in Paris for three months lodging with a French family.

She visited the Jeu de Paume and the Louvre, and became acquainted with the work of Picasso, Giacometti, Matisse and de Staël amongst many others.

As a student she was a frequent visitor to the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, the National Gallery and Victor Waddington's gallery.

Brown's abstract paintings were heavily influenced by the works of Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Antoni Tàpies, Lucio Fontana and William Scott.

Upon returning to Belfast in 1951, 24-year-old Brown made preparations for her first solo exhibition at the CEMA Gallery, for which the poet John Hewitt contributed an introduction to the catalogue.

The exhibition consisted of thirty-five oils which were predominantly landscapes, woodland scenes and rivers.

After seeing Brown's work in the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, the Scottish Colourist John D Fergusson invited Brown to show at the British Council rooms in Glasgow in 1955.

In the following year Brown had a solo exhibition of thirty-six paintings at The City Gallery in Belfast.

The works were "carried out in a broad forceful expressionist manner and in non-naturalistic colour."

Writing of Brown's abstraction in the 1959 annual exhibition of the Royal Ulster Academy Kenneth Jamison compares her to Olive Henry,"'Olive Henry is more decadent by instinct, a fine formaliser. Her pictures Man and Ropes and Riviera Port, well defined and carefully abstracted, contrast in form with Deborah Brown's freer Oil Over Tempra,[sic] 1959. But I can not go all the way with Miss Brown's disregard for formal values. Regretably -for I respect this artist's sincerity of purpose- I find the result neither aesthetically pleasing nor purposefully communicative'"In 1956 Mary O'Malley having seen Brown's abstract paintings, asked Brown to paint some stage sets which had been designed by George Morrow, for the Lyric Theatre in Belfast.

She is well known in Ireland for her pioneering exploration of the medium of fibre glass in the 1960s and established herself as one of the country's leading sculptors, achieving extensive international acclaim.

In 1960 Brown was appointed one of seven trustees of the newly formed Lyric Players Trust including T.P. Flanagan and John Hewitt.

Her involvement with stage design and the creation of various props provoked her interest in sculpture.

Brown travelled throughout the northern Italy in the 1960s, to Rome, Sienna, Florence and Ravenna, where she studied the works of Botticelli, Donatello, Michaelangelo and Fontana.

Brown became a member of the Free Painters and Sculptors and the Women's International Art Club in the early 1960s, and worked in her father's office to supplement her income.

She went on to take her professional exams in Chattels and Fine Arts, providing her with an in depth knowledge of the history of furniture, silver, porcelain and painting, as well as the laws of surveying, bookkeeping and property.

Brown was later to become a partner in the firm.

In 1965 Brown gained a major commission from the architects Cruikshank & Seward for the Ferranti Building in Manchester.

These eight large panels marked Brown's final flirtation with pure abstraction.

From the mid-sixties onwards Brown's work moved from creating papier maché reliefs on canvas to becoming increasingly three dimensional, and upon a suggestion from George MacCann, Brown began to work with fibre-glass.

In 1966 she was introduced to the owner of the Hendricks Gallery where she secured a one-woman exhibition that same year.

In the same year Brown befriended Alice Berger Hammerschlag with whom she remained friends until her death in 1969.

Brown was later asked by Kenneth Jamison, the Director of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, to select a committee to oversee an arts bursary scheme set-up in memory of Berger Hammerschlag and which aided many younger artists to travel and to purchase equipment and materials.

In 1969 Brown had a solo exhibition at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland gallery.

Brown donated a picture to an exhibition to raise funds for victims of civil disturbances in Belfast in the autumn of 1969.

The exhibition at Queen's University was organised by Sheelagh Flanagan and showed the work of T P Flanagan, William Scott and F. E. McWilliam, in addition to Mercy Hunter, Carolyn Mulholland and more than twenty others.