Olivia Brown’s paintings are dynamic, fluid images which attempt to visually convey the sensual, visceral, tangible experience of movement and energetics. Brown believes we all have an innate comprehension of movement and energetics that is not based in language but in our natural animal-body wisdom. She structures her paintings to have a physical relationship to the body, aiming to give the onlooker a visual field within which their eye can roam and through looking, can then register somatically, intuitively, the physical feeling her subject matter. She studies different forms of corporeal practice, like dance and yoga, in order to deepen her own perception of awareness through movement. She uses a fluid medium of shellac and dye which captures the immediacy, velocity and momentum of movement in paint.

Olivia Brown was born in England in 1974 and grew up in Scotland and the USA. She did her undergraduate degree at Chelsea College of Art in London in 1997 before being swept off to fall in love with California where she got her MFA at CCA in 2003. She currently lives and works in San Francisco, CA, where she is currently represented by Hang Art Gallery.