Brad Brown in the Crown Point studio, October, 1999. “I have heaps of drawings in my studio, and they are underfoot and in the way,” Brad Brown says. “So they are being marked even when I’m not consciously working on them. Ultimately I decide whether an incidental mark stays or goes. I can get rid of it, erase it, or draw over it, and it’s finally a visual decision. But I want all aspects of the process to be visible, and walking around the studio and stepping on things is part of the process.”
Brown lives in San Francisco and his primary work is drawing. He does some drawing projects that stand alone, but the work that most absorbs him is an ongoing project that he calls The Look Stains.
In this work, he frequently tears his drawings on a grid pattern, then continues to develop the fragments. He uses large and small fragments to make installation works that he rents to collectors, but does not sell. He considers “The Look Stains” to be a work that will never be finished in his lifetime, unlike his stand-alone drawings and his prints, which are available for sale.