Hilton Brown was an artist first, an educator, and a writer. As a painter and teacher of color, Brown created abstract works in the 1960's before turning to figurative representation. In the '60s Brown explored abstract and non-representational visual ideas that were heavily influenced by the Washington School of Color spearheaded by Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, and perpetuated through the works of such artists as Howard Mehring and Thomas Downing.
In Ambivalence Series 2 - No. 1, Brown carefully balanced luminous color with rigid and almost minimalist forms. Such use of geometric shapes portends the arrival of "hard-edged abstraction" and the "op art" movements which relied heavily on the use of geometric shapes. Such clear and defined shapes in our painting marked a pivoting point away from the emotional intensity of Abstract Expressionism.
