Mia Brownell (born 1971) is an American painter whose work has been described by the ''

Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

'' art critic Cate McQuaid as "a 21st-century take on the 17th-century genre, pulled off with thrilling technique -- a postmodern fruit cocktail that marries today's fascination with genetics and the building blocks of life with old-style painterly seduction."

Biography

Mia Brownell was born in 1971 in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...

, to a sculptor, Nancy J. Schulson and a biophysicist, William E. Brownell. Mia began her academic training as a painter at the age of 14 at the

Baltimore School for the Arts The Baltimore School for the Arts (BSA) is a public performing arts high school located in Mount Vernon, Baltimore, Maryland, United States and is part of the Baltimore City Public Schools system. Established in 1979, The Baltimore School for the ...

. She attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the State University of New York, Buffalo. Her paintings are in several private, corporate, and public art collections including the National Academy of Sciences. In 2014, a traveling 10-year survey of her work accompanied a solo exhibition in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

titled: ''"Delightful, Delicious, Disgusting: Paintings by Mia Brownell 2003–2013"''. The exhibition traveled to museums in

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

and

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...

. Dedicated exhibition catalog essays have been written about her work by scholars:

Donald Kuspit Donald Kuspit (born March 26, 1935) is an American art critic and poet, known for his practice of psychoanalytic art criticism. He has published on the subjects of avant-garde aesthetics, postmodernism, modern art, and conceptual art. Educatio ...

, Carolyn Korsmeyer, Kenneth Bendiner, Hanneke Grootenboer, and

Darra Goldstein Darra Goldstein (born April 28, 1951) is an American author and food scholar who is the Willcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit Professor of Russian, Emerita at Williams College. She is the founding editor of ''Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Cultur ...

. Brownell is a Professor of Art at

Southern Connecticut State University Southern Connecticut State University (Southern Connecticut, Southern Connecticut State, SCSU, or simply Southern) is a public university in New Haven, Connecticut. Part of the Connecticut State University System, it was founded in 1893 and is ...

New Haven New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,023 ...

. Art critic

said of Brownell's art at a 2010 exhibition: "Brownell’s nature has been 'modernized' and demystified, in that its genetic and cellular basis have been spelled out scientifically, but it remains mysterious—even absurdly miraculous—for it continues to produce, with patient inevitability, the fruits of life. ... Brownell’s paintings are about the bizarre look nature has when seen from a scientific perspective, that is, reductively understood in scientific terms: They are about the estranging, unnatural effect the scientific conception of nature has on the appreciative perception of it."

References

External links

Artist Web Link

Hi-Fructose Magazine

Artist Talk at Simons Center for Geometry and Physics
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brownell, Mia 1971 births Living people American still life painters American women painters Carnegie Mellon University College of Fine Arts alumni University at Buffalo alumni Southern Connecticut State University faculty 21st-century American women artists