Delia Brown, Felicity, Victorious, 2011, oil on board, 8 x 12". From the series “Felicity and Caprice,” 2006–12. Angles Gallery.
Delia Brown
Angles Gallery/Country Club at Martha Otero
A Marxist critic would argue that the uniquely unstable position of the artist within the social hierarchy is a central determinant of all that he or she makes, even if it is not explicitly acknowledged in the work, and perhaps especially then. But what if this factor were declared right up front, as it is in the paintings of Delia Brown, which have long treated class jumping and upward and downward mobility as staple themes? From the start of her career, Brown has sought to manifest a dimension of the art economy that tends to remain latent—the point at which relations between people and between things intersect and become conflated. From the outset, she has also approached this territory from two seemingly irreconcilable tangents: one part autobiographical account of the facts of her life inside the art world and one part aspirational fantasy.
Picked up just out of grad
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