Born: 1994, Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada
Current Location: New Brunswick, Canada
Website / Portfolio: gabriellebrownart.com
Instagram: @gabrielle.k.brown
Gallery Representation: Anima Mundi Gallery, Cornwall, United Kingdom
Biography
Gabrielle K. Brown has been making art since childhood, driven by a lifelong desire to create. As she grew older, she continued making time for her practice, eventually deciding to pursue it full time after becoming a mother at the age of twenty.
After graduating, she briefly attended a craft college that introduced students to a variety of artistic practices. Although she left after her first semester, the experience helped clarify the direction she wanted to take. Choosing to teach herself, Brown continued developing her work independently, eventually joining her first local gallery and presenting her first solo exhibition. The encouragement she received from the gallery owners and the success of the exhibition gave her the confidence to continue building her career. Through sharing her work online, she gradually connected with galleries and audiences internationally.
One of the most significant periods of her life came while caring for her mother during her battle with cancer, which ended with her passing in 2022. As a single mother supporting herself through art while caring for her terminally ill mother, Brown experienced a period that was simultaneously heartbreaking, exhausting, and transformative. The work created during that time became some of the deepest of her career and continues to shape her practice today.
Her work is motivated by curiosity and a desire to remain present in everyday life. She believes making art is a direct reflection of how one lives, allowing observation, openness, and lived experience to guide each new body of work.
Artistic Practice
Brown works across painting, sculpture, and mixed media. While acrylic painting on canvas and wood formed the foundation of her practice, the past eight years have seen her increasingly focused on wood sculpture. More recent works combine carved wood with materials including chicken wire, papier mâché, plaster, sand, and resin, creating sculptural forms that feel both raw and elemental. She is drawn to these materials because of their physicality and enjoys creating work that feels solid, strong, and deeply rooted in process.
Rather than identifying with a single style, Brown allows each body of work to develop naturally. Some pieces embrace a loose, folk-inspired quality, while others become more refined and contemporary. She prefers not to define where her work belongs, instead allowing each piece to determine its own visual language.
Her work continually returns to the relationship between the self and the world, expanding from personal reflection into intimate relationships, broader social structures, and the rhythms of the natural world. Confrontational or unsettling imagery is often placed alongside uplifting symbols, creating a tension that reflects joy, grief, resilience, and the complexities of human experience.
Recurring symbols often reappear when there is something more for her to understand. Animals, particularly the eagle, hold personal and spiritual significance, connecting both to childhood fascination and to memories of her mother. Throughout her work, symbols become vehicles for emotion, storytelling, and ongoing discovery.
Her influences span contemporary art, cinema, anthropology, tattoo history, outsider art, and ancient civilizations. She cites artists including Chris Burden, Matthew Barney, Richard Prince, Louise Bourgeois, Ray Johnson, along with filmmakers such as Alex Cox, Ralph Bakshi, Larry Clark, Takashi Miike, Abel Ferrara, Kenneth Anger, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Wong Kar Wai, and Mathieu Kassovitz. She is continually inspired by work rooted in storytelling, spirituality, and the human condition.
Notable Works & Exhibitions
Among Brown’s most meaningful works is Taking Mom to the Pearly Gates, an eight-foot wooden sculpture created the year after her mother’s passing. Half automobile and half casket, the work became a deeply personal process of grief, healing, and acceptance.
Her exhibition history includes a solo presentation at the London Art Fair in 2022, participation in the Folk Art Fair in New York City in 2025, and an indoor mural commission for ArtXNYC in Manhattan. She also completed a month-long residency at the Bed-Stuy Residency in Brooklyn and has painted multiple public murals throughout New Brunswick, including projects for Festival Inspire.
She is currently preparing new work for the Erotic Art Fair in New York City.
Selected Exhibitions
• London Art Fair, Solo Exhibition, London, United Kingdom, 2022
• Folk Art Fair, New York City, New York, 2025
• ArtXNYC, Indoor Mural, Manhattan, New York, 2025
Links & Press
• Office Magazine
• Booooooom New Talent Vol. 4
• Weazel Magazine
• Never Fake It Magazine
• Over Standard Magazine Interview
• Collaborations: Folk Artwork, Nathan Hollis, CESXCommercial, Julian Jaca
In Her Words
“As Robert Altman says, ‘giggle and give in.’”
