Galen Brown 1959-2024
It is with deep deep sorrow and heavy hearts that we announce the passing of artist Galen Brown on Tuesday 9th January 2024.
Installation view of Galen Brown’s solo exhibition Sinecere at the Nevada Museum of Art June 21, 2019 - January 5, 2020
Curated by JoAnne Northrup (photo by Chris Holloman)
“Sincere,” first recorded in English in the 1530s, is from the Latin word sincerus, meaning “clean, pure, sound, etc.,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Born 1959 in Reno, artist Galen Brown creates work in drawing, printmaking, mixed media sculpture, and photography that embodies the adjective and resonates with intelligence and formal beauty. This exhibition takes a retrospective view of the Carson City-based artist’s work from the 1990s to the present, highlighting process-based bodies of work—including his massive drawings on scrap museum board, like Sine Cere—which he assembles over the course of many years. Educated at the San Francisco Art Institute, Brown’s painstaking and often obsessive practice results in works that demonstrate his commitment to erasing the boundaries between art and everyday life.
Portrait of Galen Brown by Frances Melhop during his artist residency at St Mary’s Art Center 2015.
Galen Brown in his studio at Moundhouse Nevada, 2019. He hated having his photo taken but I told him it was just for scale, so people could see the work in context with a human figure….so he allowed it this once. He worked on this piece Sinecere, over a 25 year timespan. Collection of the Nevada Museum of Art.
Galen Brown’s artist talk at his solo exhibition Sinecere at the Nevada Museum of Art June 21, 2019 - January 5, 2020. Some of the 135 untitled waves series behind him.
Each wave drawing was a reflection or a reaction to life or news events. He wanted them to stay together as a series representing years and years of thinking and feeling.
GALEN BROWN
Short Bio
Galen Brown was born in Reno in 1959 and raised in both Reno and at King’s Beach, Lake Tahoe. He was a dedicated junior ski racer on the Reno Falcons ski team and later the Lake Tahoe Ski Club, and a quiet loner in school who lacked direction until a ski accident rendered him immobile for six months. He began drawing from his bed while healing.
Brown commenced classes at the San Francisco Art Institute and stayed for the duration of his formal art education, earning a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts in 1988 and a Master of Fine Arts in 1990. He continued studying in China and New York, and for the following 20 years Brown resisted selling his work to collectors, preferring to keep his bodies of work together.
In 2019 the Nevada Museum of Art installed his solo exhibition Sine Cere, across 3 of their expansive gallery spaces and purchased Sine Cere, the title piece, one of the large 8 foot radius circle drawings for their permanent collection.
A large body of Brown’s work was featured in Tilting the Basin, the Nevada Museum of Art survey exhibition of contemporary artists working in the state of Nevada in 2016, which also traveled to a second Museum location in Las Vegas in 2017. His work is also in the permanent collection of the Nevada Arts Council, and the newly founded Clear Creek Collection at Lake Tahoe.
The quality of Brown’s work was acknowledged with the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation artist’s award in 2017.
Galen Brown at OCD OCD OCD, his first solo exhibition at Melhop gallery º7077.
Left “First Aid” 83” x 83” x 3” ink on museum board, aluminum support and right Untitled #1 “Circle Series” circa 1990 - 1996, pencil and bees wax on white museum board mounted on wooden frame, 19” x 16” x 1 ½” Private Collection.
Detail of Sinecere, pencil on museum board, 6’ x 6’ x 8” a piece that Galen worked on over a 25 year span. (photo by Chris Holloman)
FRANCES MELHOP - recollections of a great friendship - GALEN BROWN
Galen Brown was the most humble, the most sincere, and the most generous artist I have ever met.
I am so happy to have met him early on when I arrived in Nevada, 2008-2009. From the moment we met we have had a deep and trusting friendship. Galen‘s compulsion to create, make, think, and endlessly work was more than remarkable. He was deeply invested in the arts and always showed up at all the regional arts events supporting other artists and their paths. While I was Director of the St Mary’s Art Center in Virginia City he made it his mission to help restore the historic building spending many many hours on his hands and knees hand sanding the original wooden floors from 1864 and bringing them back to life in the most beautiful and meticulous manner. He donated his time and skills to many projects and to many artists within whose careers and journeys he was an integral lifeline, support and force.
With a very understated sense of humour Galen would often drop an odd sentence and then wait with a quizzical look on his face for the reaction…..I know that it tickled him when people realized he was joking. A deeply sensitive man with a passion for drawing and making by hand, he would never ask for help but gave without hesitation to many.
Until 2019 he refused to sell any of his art, preferring to keep the bodies of work intact and to continue working on each series over periods as long as 35 years. The day he agreed to join the Melhop Gallery roster was an enormous breakthrough. Although it was a difficult decision for such a private person, he revelled in the fact that people actually resonated with his work and wanted to live with it. He knew what he was doing was important but hadn’t had the feedback he needed to feel like it was safe to put it out into the world on its or his own terms.
He had 2 solo shows at Melhop gallery º7077, OCD OCD OCD in 2021, and OCD,2, in 2022, his latest work is currently in the exhibition titled "Between Earth & Sky: Exploring the Great Basin through the Eyes of Northern Nevada Artists" taking place at Nevada Humanities gallery in Las Vegas, curated by Rossitza Todorova,
Galen worked obsessively, continuously with honesty and love, he adored the process, creating mesmerizing artwork that could be viewed as meditations for dreaming on….but that is not how he would have described it. Although a professed non-writer, over the last years he has used his Facebook page as his repository for archiving his work and some of the history behind it. I love the way he went backwards and forwards in time looking at his life, his work, and the process of making art.
Galen grew up at Lake Tahoe, water and the high altitude desert was in his blood and it appeared in abstract ways throughout his artwork. The day I mentioned that his Shadowcasters seemed like they must have been a direct influence from the pier he played on as a child, referencing the shadows that it cast, - the look of revelation on his face was profound.
I am so proud to have been able to represent him, help in any way I could to give him a tiny part of the accolades and attention he so deserved. Nothing could ever be enough to repay him for his earnest friendship, astonishing loyalty, support and help with any thing I ever endeavored to do, and the amazing deep and wonderful discussions we had about art.
One of my dearest friends in the entire world, I am reeling at this sudden loss.
My all time favorite photo of Galen…. I see no change from then til 2 weeks ago when I last saw him.
His caption for this photo “GB 4 years old Kings Beach before the face hair.”
Detail of “Prime” a Shadowcaster, drawing, 6.5 foot x 4.5” x 2.5” Ink on museum board, steel metal support.
Pier at Kings Beach, Lake Tahoe, where Galen Brown grew up.
Recent small waves drawings at the Metro Gallery, Reno, "Between Earth & Sky: Exploring the Great Basin through the Eyes of Northern Nevada Artists" the energy and vibrations each work emits is strong - they need to be further apart for the full experience of the work…sometimes Galen wanted each work in most series to have a minimum of 1 foot between it and the next.
Recent smallest waves drawings at the Nevada Humanities Gallery, Las Vegas, "Between Earth & Sky: Exploring the Great Basin through the Eyes of Northern Nevada Artists"
Galen Brown at OCD OCD OCD with the first ever large Circle drawing…. I have been sneakily trying to document Galen and his work even though he wasnt keen on photos.
First Aid 83” x 83” x 3” ink on museum board, aluminum support and right Untitled #1 “Circle Series” circa 1990 - 1996, pencil and bees wax on white museum board mounted on wooden frame, 19” x 16” x 1 ½” Private Collection. Galen told me that he was very upset about the war with Iraq and that is when he began working on First Aid.
Detail of First Aid 83” x 83” x 3” ink on museum board, aluminum support. The red cross is carved back into the drawing, I think with a kind of oxide to color it. Galen told me that it was the scale and size of a human body.
I took this photo at the Nevada Museum of Art, it was one of the photos Galen particularly loved, to the left is Sinecere 8 foot x 8 foot, (acquired by the Nevada Museum of Art) and the artwork on the right is Smoulder 13 foot x 13 foot, both are pencil on museum board, completed over a time span of 30 years. All of the circles are freehand drawing, there was no spinning table or any way to make things easy. He worked from the inside to the outer edges adding more and more museum board to the front and back as each circle grew.
Pink beside green, ink on museum board mounted on aluminum, mounted on wooden frame with aluminum backing. 4.25” x 35.5” x 1.5” 2022. The wave series began after the circles series and continued through until 2024, they range in size from 3 inches wide to 12 feet in length.
Detail of Drive Through, drawing, ink on museum board, aluminum and steel support, 91 ½” x 4 2/3” x 1 ½”. Galen told me that this piece was inspired by worn patches on the speaker panel at the drive through he often got food at.
Left, Pulse, drawing, 12 foot x 4.5” x 2.5” ink on museum board, steel metal support. Right, Doors series. Mezzotint on Somerset Satin paper, image area: 6 x 4”, print size: 12.5 x 10” (approx.)
Doors series, mezzotint on Somerset Satin paper, image area: 6 x 4”. Print size: 12.5 x 10” (approx.) Edition of 10. Galen had a great passion for mezzotint, the slowness, the painstaking process and the ability to mix drawing with the backwards and forwards of lightening and darkening of a rocked plate.
Walls and doors series #01, Mezzotint on Somerset Satin paper. Image area: 7 7/8th x 26” Print size: 11 7/8th x 30” (approx.). Galen told me that he spent a day inking and wiping the plate for each print…. I think only printmakers will understand this level of dedication……
Trees series at Tilting the Basin in Las Vegas, 2017. These trees are used Christmas trees that friends gave Galen or he collected from abandoned piles. Each tree was lovingly worked on, first cutting the branches then stripping the bark off then treating each tree in whatever way it seemed to need.
Galen Brown with one of the earliest circles in the series at his OCD OCD OCD solo exhibition. Caught a very rare smile photo…although I remember him laughing and smiling all the time.
Shadow of Galen Brown on his first Circle piece. Square circle drawing, Circles series, 5 foot x 5 foot. Pencil on museum board mounted on panel. In the collection of the Clear Creek Golf Club, Nevada. The center panel was of deep significance to Galen after a near and horrifying adze accident of one of the employees at his Dry Ice framing studio in the Bay area.
It was the initiation of all of the circles.