Kyle Brown Jr

Bio

Kyle Brown Jr is an American contemporary artist, a native of the Deep South, born in Decatur, Georgia in 1970. He lives and works now in South Carolina. Self-taught, he was introduced to visual arts at a young age, and has established a sustained rhythm of production and exploration across various mediums, including pastel drawing, printmaking, and painting. 

Kyle is also a humanitarian aid worker, beginning in Africa with the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and most recently during the war in Ukraine in 2022-2023. His art is spurred on by these life experiences. He says: “I find art to be a meaningful response to the complex problems of our modern world”.

In the studio, Kyle creates art from subjects of the natural world. He seeks simplicity in his artwork, taking guidance from Mark Rothko with the quote: “We favor the simple expression of complex thought…There is no such thing as good painting about nothing”.

Statement

“Art became meaningful to me after I lived and worked in Africa as a humanitarian aid worker during war in Rwanda. After these years, I discovered metaphor in art, a shift for me away from viewing art as aesthetics. My artwork has now become a search for optimism found in the natural world: insects and fish for their bright colors, celestial subjects for their splendor, blueberries for their whimsy, rivers and the ocean for their curious wandering, the earth itself for its mystery and beauty.

Printmaking and pastel drawing are my mediums. Both employ the same thick cotton paper. I like printmaking for its physicality, the aroma of the ink, the saturated colors, the crisp edges. But when I need a subtle gradient, I turn to pastel drawing, where I blend pigments on the page by hand, a very tactile art. I also explore to find new art methods, such as pastel drawing on sopping wet paper, similar to watercolor, but with higher contrast. I like to amplify the visual appeal of a subject by reducing the number of its colors, or by abstracting its shape. To that end, my work is a form of abstract realism, which I find satisfying for its flexible interpretation and enhanced color palette.”