As a visual artist, I cannot help but respond to the environment surrounding me. Over decades of making art, my subject matter has ranged from landscape to figure to still life to flowers: mountains and rivers in Oregon, factories in Boston, people I have met, and objects I’m fascinated by.
My early art training began at the Art Institute of Chicago. From 1992 to 1997, I studied with Herman Rowan, Carl Bethke, and Tom Cowette at the University of Minnesota and then from 1998 to 2001, I worked in watercolor with Bici Petit-Baron through the Radcliffe Landscape Design Program in Cambridge, MA. I continue to study through workshops throughout the U.S.
My work ranges from traditional oils to abstract collage. My underlying interest, however, is in the natural form: landscape, figure, or object. I have used oil paint, watercolor, or acrylic often with layering for translucency or texture. I love saturated color, and to bring a sense of delight to the painting, perhaps a little whimsy, in the distorted perspective and flat graphic shapes. I am trying to abstract the essence of the natural in a tactile manner.
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Nancy Houfek Brown is an established Oregon artist living and working in the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area. She is on the roster of artists exhibiting at Art of Oak in Hood River, Oregon. She is one of the artists chosen to participate in the Gorge Artists’ Open Studio Tour. Her paintings have also shown at the Columbia Center for the Arts Gallery in Hood River, where she took First Place in “The Best of the Gorge,” and Verum Ultimum Gallery in Portland. Ten of her large works were on exhibit at the Portland International Airport from August 2016 through July 2017. Her art has also been exhibited in galleries in Texas, California, Ohio, Colorado, Minnesota, and Massachusetts, where she was a juried member of the Cambridge Artists' Association.
Other major exhibits include a mixed media installation in "Altars and Shrines" at the Durango Center for the Arts; a solo show of thirty-three paintings, "Landscapes in Mixed Media," at Harvard University; participation in a decade of "Art in the Garden" shows at the Columbia Center for the Arts Gallery, culminating in a featured show during November 2016 called "Remembrance;” and many solo and multi-artist exhibits at Cathedral Ridge Winery in Hood River, OR.