Memoir: Everald Brown (1917-2002) – Part 1
Everald Brown – or Brother Brown, as he was commonly called – had his first exhibition at the Creative Arts Centre (now the Phillip Sherlock Centre) at the University of the West Indies – Mona in 1969. In 1972, his work was featured in Contemporary Art from the Caribbean at the OAS Art Gallery, the precursor of the Art Museum of the Americas, in Washington, DC. By the mid-1970s, he was a well-respected Jamaican artist and culture bearer, whose work was regularly exhibited, collected, and written about, locally and internationally. In 1979, he was given a central position in the National Gallery of Jamaica’s Intuitive Eye, a landmark exhibition which launched the concept of “Intuitive Art”, as a designation for self-taught, popular art and an alternative to more problematic terms such as “Primitive”. The Intuitive Eye was curated by the National Gallery’s then director/curator David Boxer, who became one of Brother Brown’s most avid collectors and supporters.
It may appear that Everald Brown’s ascent to artistic recognition was swift and relatively easy, and that he received widespread support, but this leaves out many parts of his story. Despite the acknowledgement he received during his lifetime, he never acquired any wealth and today, nearly 20 years after his death, public awareness about his work and its context is surprisingly limited, certainly in comparison to other greats of Jamaican art, such as Barrington Watson and Edna Manley. As I have argued before, it takes continuous effort to keep the work of artists who are no longer active in the public consciousness. More needs to be done by those who are entrusted with the country’s artistic heritage and, for that matter, all who are interested in Jamaican art, to keep alive the legacies of artists such as Brother Brown, who are not associated with social and political power in ways that will keep their memory active.
I do not recall exactly when I first met Everald Brown, but it must have been around the time I started working at the National Gallery. Olive Senior, who edited Jamaica Journal at that time, invited me to submit a research article on his life and work. The resulting article, titled “The Rainbow Valley: The Life and Work of Brother Everald Brown” (1988) became my first major publication on Jamaican art. In preparation for the article, I visited Brother Brown’s home in Murray Mountain, in southern St Ann, further inland from Alexandria and close to the Cockpit Country, near the geographic centre of the island. The experience gave me my first major exposure to the rich spiritual and cultural life of deep rural Jamaica and the evocative, almost primordial beauty of the karst landscapes of the island’s interior. A significant part of Brother Brown’s work as an artist was, in fact, about the relationship between the spiritual and the land. A lifelong working relationship and friendship with Brother Brown ensued, with many more visits to Murray Mountain. I curated a major retrospective exhibition of his work for the National Gallery of Jamaica in 2004.
Brother Brown was born not far from Murray Mountain and grew up in Sandy River, near Kellits, in northern Clarendon. His father was a beekeeper and herbalist, and Jamaica’s popular spiritual life was thus part of Brother Brown’s experience from birth. Like many poor, rural Jamaicans of his generation, Brother Brown and his wife, Sister Jenny, moved to Kingston in search of economic opportunity and settled in West Kingston in 1947, where he started working as a carpenter. While also working independently, he was employed on the construction site of the National Stadium, one of several major public works during the period around Independence. He eventually settled at 82 ½ Spanish Town Road, where the Spanish Town Examination Depot is now located, in a yard he shared with a Kumina and a Zion Revival group. This yard remained his home until 1974 when he moved back to the country.
During his early years in West Kingston, Brother Brown was exposed to the mystical teachings of Joseph Hibbert, one of the pioneers of the Rastafarian movement. Like many of those who were attracted to the spiritual, religious aspects of the movement, Brown gravitated to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (EOC), one of the oldest and furthermore African, Christian denominations. Around 1960, he established his own small church community, The Assembly of the Living, as an informal, self-appointed mission of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which involved mainly the members of his own family and persons in his immediate community. Although he became a member when the EOC was formally established in Jamaica in 1970, Brother Brown’s beliefs and practices were never orthodox but intertwined with elements from Rastafari, Kumina and Revival as well as his own, unique spiritual views – a great example of the complex “creolizations” that have taken place in popular religion in the Caribbean and defy clear-cut labels or categorizations. Brother Brown was not a Rastafarian in any narrowly defined sense, but he was associated, and entirely on his own terms, with the religious, spiritual side of the movement.
The first art works Everald Brown produced, were ritual objects, musical instruments and paintings for his small church at 82 ½ Spanish Town Road. It is these that first attracted the attention of Jeanette Grant-Woodham, who then worked as a folklore research officer at the Institute of Jamaica and who, in 1968, started documenting the musical practices of Brother Brown and his family. The rest, so to speak, is history.
Next week, in part 2 of this feature, we will take a closer look at Everald Brown’s work and his life after he moved to Murray Mountain in 1974.
Dr Veerle Poupeye is an art historian specialized in art from the Caribbean. She lectures at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica, and works as an independent curator, writer, researcher, and cultural consultant. Her personal blog can be found at veerlepoupeye.com.
