INTRODUCTION | DENNIS L. FORBES
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eveloping a readily recognizable aesthetic as a practicing visual artist is very crucial to separate yourself from other artists. This aesthetic will create a demand for an artist’s brand and creativity. The learning process to establish a signature style helps to create an organic customer loyalty and commitment to the artist’s brand. The business of art requires that a visual artist create unique and remarkable compositions and themes. This book through selective documentation of Poncho’s artistic works exposes the fantastically successful art business of Larry Poncho Brown whose art compositions and themes are saturated with vivid colors. During the past forty years, Larry Poncho Brown has been an artist to watch and his works the ones to collect by collectors because of the energy contained in his innovative artistic creations. Looking at the creative and multi-faceted art offerings of Poncho, I noted that he offers sculptures, ceramics, glassware, limited edition prints, open edition prints, posters, original works on paper and canvas, clothing, greeting cards, masks, and the classic “Poncho.” Impressively, he has won numerous awards for his creativity in the highly competitive world of art. Poncho, who by the way, loves the excitement that a challenge offers, has immersed himself, since he was a young lad, into creating unique art objects that then as well as now echo a strong universal urban cultural content. Notably, Poncho’s artistic beginnings were stimulated by his beginning his professional art career as a sign maker painting stylistic letters on billboards and buildings around the city in Baltimore, Maryland. Poncho’s mastery of sign art made it easy for him to transition as a trail blazing visual artist to watch during the emergence of the digital age and become an effective communicator of his artistic aesthetic and skills to followers of his brand through the use of present-day social media communication vehicles. As a young emerging artist, Poncho forged forward with strong determination to achieve and expand his “BIG” dream to become a professional artist of influence. To make his dream a reality, Poncho focused daily on establishing an end game strategy that reinforced his surging aspiration to become an
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Photo by Kirth Bobb
accomplished artist -- even if he had to make daily modification adjustments. He developed a guiding triangle principle consisting of perseverance, enjoyment, and hope. The compilation of works contained in this book will spark intrigue as you look at the vivid use of color and the compositions of the body of unique work produced by Poncho. Interestingly, the works presented reveal a special continuity of the ebb and flow of Poncho’s life as he consciously dabbled with radical art concepts. The materials, surfaces, and paints and cutting-edge technology that he used resulted in the output of a high volume of works about jazz, dancers, everyday life, and much more. As a longtime frontline champion in the business of art, Poncho has been arousing the interests of art collectors with impressive art creations. His work embodies iconography and his artistic contributions warrant investigation of inclusion into the sphere of art creativity by a contemporary class of innovative visual artists. As you react with inquisitiveness to the unique stylized works presented herein, it will become clear to you that Poncho did not waste any of the years of his study of art. As you note his courage to experiment with his ideas, take notice through this documentation of his earnest attempts to develop a creativeness that is now recognizably his style that causes collectors and institutions to have a high demand for his creations. As a result, Poncho has emerged as an influential modern visual arts master. Poncho, not afraid to be strong and confident, when asked to describe his creative processes, said, “In my eyes, my cre-
