DVAA Member since July 2020
Inga Kimberly Brown
Website:
About:
Inga Kimberly Brown was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She received an MFA (2014-2016) from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a BFA (2010-2014) from The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. “I was born an artist and I believe art making is my first language of communication. I want to engage in a community that communicates in that first language no matter the medium.” Inga’s inspiration derives from her family and racial mixed heritage as well as her spiritual and sensitive sense of altered states and various astro planes that exist around us. She is a new drawing and painting instructor at Fleisher Art Memorial.
Artist Statement:
“My recent works are oil paintings on sewn canvas panels and un sewn canvases on which a hybridization takes place through the implementation of three-dimensional objects that are either sewn on or attached with adhesive, threads, and paint, along with organic materials such as eggshells and holy water. I combine seed beads, faux grass, and 24-karat gold leaf, as well as oil on wooden extensions of the canvas.
The work shows elements of ritual and tradition.
For inspiration, I use family photographs as well as non-photographic references from my imagination and intuition to paint what my mind sees and wants to convey in the painting. The focus is an abstract dialogue with my mixed tri-racial heritage, taking place in the antebellum and postbellum South as filtered through my mind and vision. In some of the paintings, I subtract color to add a past, or create mythical visions of a bastardized culture, juxtaposed with the saturated color of the present. The compositions explore conflict and isolation, while sharing narratives of the African-American, European-American, and Indigenous American heritage I embody. The hybridization of the materials in the work becomes autobiographic.”
Exhibitions at DVAA:
