Heather Mary Brown

Born Great Britain, 1955

Although Heather Brown was born overseas she has lived most of her life on the coast of British Columbia. Other than a seven year stint on the Queen Charlotte Islands she has lived on Vancouver Island for over forty five years.

Heather is self-taught as far as her artwork goes. Her father and mother (and all seven brothers and sisters) are artists in their own way. She was always encouraged and rewarded in the long path to becoming an artist by her parents so for her to say “I am self taught” doesn’t sound quite right either. Maybe it could be said that she didn’t go to school for art training. (She has been known to insist that art is not self-taught but inherited and nurtured). Whenever Heather gets too swell-headed, her mother always managed to find the chicken picture she did at two years of age, complete with real chicken feathers and some feed glued to it, to bring her back to earth.

Heather spent a lot of time studying how things worked, moved, or grew. She has taken courses in the sciences, trying to get a handle on life around her. She still uses the big old platform microscope, acquired back in the day, to look at latest beetle eating her potato plants or favourite hosta. A quick sketch is done, then it’s let go and she is off to the books to find out what it was and if she needs worry.

Most of my art work reflects the life around me, the animals and plants that thrive in this “rain” forest” we call home, the old buildings, the people and machinery that work there. I’m glad that I spent all that time in younger days, studying the inner workings of life around me. Knowing things “in-side-out” has stood me in good stead when it comes rendering them realistically in whatever medium I choose.

Heather has a belief anyone can draw, just like, with encouragement and perseverance, anyone can play the piano, but a rare few can do these things exceptionally. When she is painting in public she often gets asked “How did you learn to do that?” Heather Mary Brown’s answer? “I really don’t know. I don’t know why a person can play piano so amazingly, another paints like Leonardo, one sings like an angel. Maybe all there is to know about me can be found in the lame quote from that famous cartoon artist, Popeye the Sailor Man, “I yams what I yams”.