"Portrait of Walter, West View" one of four paintings, evokes both a person and a place. Michelle Brown’s perspective was to feel the center, stand on one spot and look in four directions; and to grasp the interaction and intersection of design, organized workmanship, and the buzz and movement of nature. Pier, lake, boathouse, hill, and sky describe an arc, a circumscribed realm in which a personality finds its outlet and makes its mark. The artist tries to paint these features with measured strikes; paying homage to the angles, lengths, and proportions carefully made, while listening to those murmurs of flourishing life, and keeping her own peculiar painter's language in free play.
"Bow and Clouds" is a fragmentation of an image of a boat and sky. Rowboats and sailing vessels become ready metaphors and she has used them often. These images reoccur as motifs in the works of so many artists over time, in narrative and symbolic contexts, that they have grown as universal as a face in their capacity to express. In this case the image is broken and spread over six canvases put together, to form a kind of musical pattern and rhythm.
