A Quiet Place pa i n t i n g s
a n d
a n s w e r s
Ann-Marie Brown
A Quiet Place
Paintings and Answers Ann-Marie Brown
A Quiet Place Copyright Š 2010 by Ann-Marie Brown All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. Design and Production: Wendy Crumpler, Maxart.com Author Photo: ŠKrista Ockenden Printed in Canada by.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Brown, Ann-Marie A Quiet Place / Ann-Marie Brown. ISBN xxx-x-xxxxxxx-x-x
A Quiet Place
Winter Wood When I run ahead of everyone these woods become my woods. Where trees and stories entwine. Let the wolf come. We will be
wild together.
A Quiet Place This rock is my quiet place. On it, sheltered by rushes,
I
n a c
the sou r a e nd h
of th
r e v o e cr g eek singin
to s e th
nes.
A Summer Haze I run
towards the warmth of a towel
in the hot sun,
but soon
the salt taste left on my lips
es
where, once more,
.
tugs me back to the ocean
v a w e h I am a dolphin in t
Tree Girl The strength of the earth rushes up the trunk of this tree. In it I unfurl like one of her leaves, and am as content as one of her apples.
Tidepool Still on the surface. Teeming with life beneath. The only way to see a tidepool is
to
step
into
it.
Moth When you disguise yourself as your self that nobody sees, flowers turn their faces towards you.
Shaping Sand If you are building something that won’t last, it’s best to make it as
Beautiful
as you can.
Queen Cast shadows of leaves
become shapes of figures,
beckoning me to be their Queen.
A Butterfly’s Wings
I
For just a moment, a m a i r b o r n e . My dress,
a
b u t t e r f l y ’ s
w i n g s .
Fall Crisped leaves ‘
under my feet.
Ann-Marie Brown is a painter who currently occupies a narrow strip ŠKrista Ockenden
of land between the forest and the sea on the west coast of Canada. She has been exhibiting her paintings in Canada and the United States for the past decade. The seed for this book was planted at her exhibition for the Quiet Place paintings. The show took place in Montreal at a gallery in the Mile End neighbourhood, one of those enclaves sprouting up across North America where parents bring the kids along for live music and art shows. The children at the exhibition were interested in the paintings, talked about their ideas of what was going on for the figures, and confided about their own quiet places. From these conversations, the idea of turning the show into a coffee table art book for kids was born.
Praise for Ann-Marie Brown Ann-Marie Brown is an absolute master of visual poetry. Ian Macpherson Go-go Radio Magic Show CJLO Ann-Marie Brown is a new talent. She overlaps layers of molten wax, resin and oil paint to disintegrate and veil her figurative subjects. © Mia Johnson Preview Magazine Ann-Marie depicts children as honestly as she does adults. She’s impressed with their passions, surprises and how engaging they can be, and brings these aspects to life with numerous layers of material, just until she’s captured a single moment in time.” Milena Katz Parkhurst Exchange Ann-Marie paints the human figure as it engages her being and her daily movements. She captures the sensation of a human being, becoming, growing, changing, yet simultaneously having arrived in its fullness. Her figurative paintings therefore shift between form and formlessness. She captures a moment of stillness, an image seen, sensed, in ‘the blink of an eye’. She paints from the eyes of compassionate experience, witnessing life in its raw infallible beauty. Joanna Mackenzie-Enga