I grew up in the studio of my father, Frederick J. Brown (1945-2012), where, in the midnight hours, the creative 'spirits', as he called them, were conjured through the catalytic force of Black music. To step into the studio was to leave the real world and be enveloped in the possibilities realized by 'the music', felt through sound, space, movement, texture, colour and community.
Raised in South Chicago, Brown was in close contact with 'the music' from a young age. His father, Andrew Bentley, managed a neighbourhood pool hall frequented by blues legends such as Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and Etta James. St. Paul's AME Church provided a front-row seat to Chicago's historic gospel music tradition, while the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), pushed jazz towards the Afro-diasporic abstract rhythms of 'openness'.
In 1970, after participating in AACM collaborations in Europe, Brown left Chicago for New York, taking up residence at SoHo’s 131 Prince Street (also known as Artist House), where free-jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman had established an avant-garde arts centre, which included a performance space, gallery and living quarters. Brown’s early paintings at Artist House reflect Coleman’s philosophy of harmolodics, which embraced abstraction as inherently interdisciplinary. Through Coleman, Brown was introduced to artists Daniel Johnson and Virginia Jaramillo. At their 109 Spring Street loft, they facilitated conversations around the contemporary limitations placed upon Black artists and abstract art. Collaborating with Johnson and Jaramillo, as well as Frank Bowling, Al Loving, Bill Hutson and Gerald Jackson, Brown embraced maximalist colour field painting, exploring depth, texture and narrative. In their griotic quality, Brown’s abstractions engage music, mythology, ancestry and cosmology.
—Bentley Brown in Frieze Masters
