DVAA Member since 2024

Robin Brownfield

WEBsite: robinbrownfieldmosaics.com

About:

I am a former sociology professor living in Collingswood, New Jersey who turned to art after becoming disabled. While I dabble in numerous art forms, my specialty is mosaic art. I am best known for doing portraits and works for social justice. In 2020, I was featured in a FOX-29 (Philadelphia)
News report, because after sharing a series of award winning “Black Lives Matter” mosaic portraits online, I was commissioned by Tamika Palmer to do a mosaic portrait of her daughter, Breonna Taylor, whose death, in part, launched an international movement for justice for victims of racist murders. That portrait can be seen in the documentary “Bree Way: Promise Witness Remembrance.” 

To date, my artwork has been in galleries in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York City, Las Vegas, Norfolk, Virginia, Texas, and San Francisco. I have been named one of the Best Mosaic Artists in New Jersey by the magazine Best of New Jersey, had a cover story in 08108 Magazine, and have had my work featured in The Retrospect in Collingswood. In May, 2022, I completed a community mosaic mural project that I designed. I taught dozens of community people, children, parents, teachers, the principal, and neighbors, how to mosaic at Thomas Sharp Elementary School in Collingswood, NJ. The mosaic, entitled “Childhood Memories,” was featured in reports on FOX-29 News and CBS News in Philadelphia.

I have won so many awards in juried shows for my artwork, I’ve stopped counting. I honestly have trouble keeping track of them all; however, my ultimate goal is to use my mosaic artwork to address pressing social issues such as racism, war, poverty and homelessness, exploitation of workers, child slavery, climate change and environmental disaster, rights issues for women, LGBTQ, and more. I am currently working on a mosaic about school shootings and gun violence. It should be completed this week.

I have also worked as an organizer for the United Farm Workers, a labor journalist, have written and performed in musicals in NYC (the musical, Delilah, starred Uzo Aduba in the title role), am a community activist, and ran for House of Representatives in NJ’s Congressional District 1 with the Green Party in 2024.


Visit my website, robinbrownfieldmosaics.com, to see more of my work.

Artist Statement:

I’m the only woman in my family who has not gone into some field in health or medicine. I tried. I went to nursing school for a year, but then had a baby. Four more babies, 2.5 degrees (none of them in art) later, and a career teaching sociology and labor studies, while organizing my co-workers into unions, I eventually got old and too disabled to race with the other rats.

Then I filled my life with art.



I had been doing artistic things over the years, mostly because I was always too broke to buy things, so I worked with whatever I had at my disposal to be creative. I made Christmas and birthday cards. I crocheted. I made quilts. I made all my kids Halloween costumes. My kids had a lot of superhero capes.



I also painted furniture with elaborate designs, did a few graphic art illustrations to pay a couple of bills, and wrote a couple of musicals, one that played off Off Broadway. The star of that musical, Uzo Aduba, became a big star. I also made the costumes, and ended up performing in “Delilah,” because the director kept making actors quit. Plus, I could sing the high notes.



I also home schooled my kids for 14 years, and focused heavily on using art as integral to their education. 



Still rooted in having no money, I started focusing on mosaic art, because I needed a backsplash in my kitchen, and the only way I was going to get one was to do it myself, even if I did it wrong. So I now have a mosaic kitchen, bathroom, garden walkway, wall art which started winning me awards, and now I’ve moved on to public art, including a 57’X4.5’ mosaic mural outside a local elementary school.

Currently, I am working on a giant mosaic butterfly statue and a bunch of little mosaic butterflies for butterfly gardens started in the local business section of my town. I’m also working a mosaic portrait via Soul Shots.