By Jean Packard

All About Art

Isabel Brown paints images of death - her own. “I live one day at a time,” said Isabel Brown, a vibrant woman of Peruvian origin. Married to an American and mother of three grown children, Brown has worked from her private studio in Los Altos Hills for the past 20 years.

Isabel was a kidney transplant recipient eight and a half years ago. The kidney was rejected several times causing near-death episodes, along with a form of cancer of the liver. Now, with everything in remission, Brown said, “I have lived past my greatest expectations and long enough to see two grandchildren born.”

“My paintings are all about my understanding of death, my fears and my childhood memories. The content of my art comes from my dreams and has been a true spiritual transformation. Over a three-year period they have helped me heal and resolve religious issues within myself. The process of painting has become my dance, my symbol for hope and my ritual for praying.”

San Jose State University recently added Brown to the prestigious list of only 13 artists recognized over 25 years from their Master of Fine Arts program. David Ross, director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, adjudicated the selection.

After completing a bachelor’s degree from the University of San Francisco in psychology, Brown went to the Packard Art Studio. She subsequently earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine arts at San Jose State where she studied with the renowned painter Rupert Garcia.

Brown has three distinguished solo exhibitions and six group exhibits to her credit and is currently displayed at Applied Materials Inc.

In response to the question of whether she finds exhibiting death images disturbs the viewing public, Brown said, “Quite to the contrary, people ask me lots of questions. I think people need to talk about death. I can only hope to be on exhibit in a museum where more persons can gather and discuss death together. It is a liberating experience.

” I don’t know how long I will live, but my painting is a search to find the significance of joy and pain.”

Brown’s paintings, rich with heavy oil paint, are large, 5 feet by 6 feet to 7 feet by 10 feet, with superbly attended-to surfaces. Her work is reminiscent of Vincent van Gogh in its careful artistic attention to detail and technique. The content is personal, dark and autobiographical, calling the viewer into her close intimate space. Brown’s colors tend to be critically neutral with perhaps as little as one intense color pointing the viewer to her startling symbolism.

Brown does not think her work or motifs are part of a larger art movement such as the Eschatologists or the Expressionists. “No! I don’t think so. I don’t call myself anything. I am just myself.

“My work is for me about me. I am not part of or concerned with style. I live and die within the process of my work,” she said.

Jean Packard, artist, teacher and owner of Packard Art Studio in Los Altos for Contemporary Art. 941-7033, e-mail packardartstudio@mymailstation.com.