If ever a painter showcased the melted flesh of humanity's imperfection, Glenn Brown might be him. If ever a hidden vault of portraits of the corrupt souls of famous paintings' subjects existed in some cluttered closet, Glenn Brown might have painted them. If he had been available to paint Hurd Hatfield's portrait he surely would have jumped at the opportunity, but does this define Brown's work or even begin to characterize its effect?
Looking at the broad range of his images one could not say for sure. As if skinned and captured, many of Brown's portraits are grippingly objectionable, but so tastefully and masterfully rendered that they exhibit naught but the highest aesthetic sense behind them. Initially appearing to be mixed and crossed tube-squeezed markings of oil, expression unabashedly emerges from the faces in portrait. In each, Brown has cut out a figure in the carpet from seemingly chaotic strokes. The impressions are undeniable and unlike any other artist's work, and thus call for a new reading of facial interpretation -- that of the subtlest recognition of what peers at us -- whether it has eyes and all those other features or simply gaping holes where they might have been. Through the unrecognizable sometimes the universal is more clearly shown
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