Everett Currier Brown, Big Tree Road, South Daytona, Fla., Sunrise. Oil on board, 10 by 14 inches.
Everett Brown worked as a commercial artist in New York City for twenty-five years before moving to Daytona Beach in 1937. Brown lived on the beach for years, later moving to Big Tree Road in South Daytona. He was active in the Daytona Beach Art League, serving as president in 1959.
One of the best known artists in the Halifax area, an interview in the Daytona Beach Evening News, April 26, 1959 quotes Brown, “The smoke was overpowering, the heat terrific and along came two laborers. They looked like devils out of Dante’s Inferno. That’s how Everett Brown came to immortalize the Daytona Beach City Dump in oils…Not content with a literal representation of his subject; he says his aim in painting is to intensify reality. ‘By adding, taking away, rearranging, or if necessary, all three, the artist can achieve a reality which will heighten the effect of his work’…From art school he went into commercial work, doing advertising layouts. ‘After all, you have to eat. Some of the finest artists I’ve known designed candy boxes to get money to live on.’ His work now runs mostly to still life and scenes. Of the 72 paintings in his show, only one is a figure study. ‘They don’t go much for nudes down here…’ He prefers to work directly on location, painting what he sees, subject of course to his aim of interpreting though his painting…Working as rapidly as he does Brown is a prolific artist, as is evidenced by the large number of paintings in his show…In addition to his painting, Brown is president of the Art League. ‘At the center we try to have something for those persons who care for art. We have lectures and instruction sessions. We bring in shows and have exhibitions by local workers…He objects to the term, modern art. ‘Art’s art, anytime or place and it’s always modern.”
Born: 1897.
Education: National Academy of Design with Kenneth H. Miller, Walter Briggs; Art Students League, NYC.
Membership: Daytona Beach Art League, president, 1959; Florida Federation of Art.
Exhibits: First Art Salon, Yowell-Drew Department Store, Beach Street, Daytona Beach, February 9-16, 1932; Daytona Beach Art League, 15th Annual, March 1947, Chocorua, Caught in the Open, Sprout Lake; Daytona Beach Art League, 16th Annual, April 1948, Boston Garden, New Hampshire Bridge, Profile Brook New Hampshire, Bridge and Bristol Island New Hampshire, New Hampshire Landscape, Now What?; Daytona Beach Art League, 24th Annual Exhibit of Members’ Work, January-February 1956, landscape, oil, Beach Dune; St. Augustine Art Association, February 1956, judge; Daytona Beach Art League Annual, January 1957, 1st prize, marine; Florida Federation of Art, 32nd Annual Exhibition, November 13-28, 1958, Daytona Beach, oil, Macabre Study; Daytona Beach Art League, 27th Annual Members’ Exhibit, January 1959, red ribbon, landscape, Dune; Daytona Beach Art League, April 1959, one man show, seventy-tw0 paintings; Daytona Beach Art League, 28th Annual, January 1960, Template.
Directory: Listed in the Daytona Beach City Directory, 1949, 1951, 1955, 1958 as a landscape artist with a studio at 2323 South Peninsula Drive.
