Joan Brown at the San Jose Museum of Art

Joan Brown | Girls in the Surf with Moon Casting a Shadow, 1962, oil on canvas,72 x 72 inches, Collection of Suzanne Diamond

Joan Brown | Self-Portrait in Knit Hat, 1972, enamel on canvas, 20 x 16 inches, Private Collection

Although lacking in the artist’s early paintings to some extent, the exhibition does boast a sizeable group of self-portraits, which succeed in displaying the artist’s physical, emotional, and spiritual developments throughout her life. A particularly large group of self-portraits from the 1970s gives viewers a glimpse into Brown’s rigorous and repeated exploration of self. It is interesting to note, as the show’s curator has done, that this occurs in a period of American history when second-wave feminism was coming to the forefront. Although Brown herself insisted that she did not identify as a part of the feminist movement, the timely development of this type of work is difficult to ignore.

Joan Brown | Self-Portrait in Fur Hat, 1972, enamel on panel, 46 ¾ x 29 ¾ inches, Courtesy of di Rosa, Napa

The exhibition is particularly engaging because a great deal of Joan Brown’s biography comes through in her paintings. Her son, pets, relationships, and hobbies are frequent subjects of many works, highlighting her roles as a mother, wife, teacher, swimmer, and artist. While her paintings usually focused on what she was, rather than what she wasn’t, there is one piece that provides a rare tongue-in-cheek reflection on the qualities she lacked. In Self-Portrait (1977) the artist depicts herself painting, immaculately clad in a formal dress with matching white heels. In reality, Brown was famous for her somewhat careless use of materials, often ending each day covered head to toe in paint, as was her studio. The portrait becomes a commentary on the neatly composed housewife she may have felt pressured to be. It may also have been a commentary on the type of subject matter women as artists were expected to produce. In it she portrays herself painting a pretty but bland still-life. Behind her rests another work, The Kiss, (1979), also in the exhibition, yet the embracing figures are conspicuously cropped out.

Joan Brown | Self-Portrait, 1977, oil enamel on canvas, 90 x 72 inches, Collection of Sandra Shannonhouse

Joan Brown | The Kiss, 1976, enamel on canvas, 96 x 78 inches, Estate of Joan Brown

Joan Brown | Portrait of a Girl, 1971, enamel on masonite, 97 ¾ x 49 ¾ inches, Estate of Joan Brown

There was one factor that noticeably stayed constant throughout Brown’s transformative career, namely, the large scale of her paintings. She once confessed that she painted that size because it allowed her to feel like a participant rather than a spectator, and that she was better able to identify with her life-size figures. As a viewer walking among her powerful and sometimes provocative works, their large scale and emphatic energy certainly makes becoming absorbed by the artist’s life and stories an effortless task.