Mia Brownell
Selected unsolicited responses to paintings.
All names removed for privacy.

Thank you for the e-mails, blog posts & tweets!!

E-mail 2012
I was just e-mailing you to say that your paintings are magnificent. I am a student at -- and I went to a show which had displayed some of your paintings. Both my boyfriend and I really connected with them. They are beautiful, intricate, complex, and just simply fun to look at. Now, I am not an aspiring artist or anything, but your paintings have inspired me. They inspired me to look at things differently, and to see the new with the old, as well as the concepts behind what people are trying to say.

Blog 2010
For the quasi-foodie in me (can you be a foodie if you are a veg e tar ian? I tend to think not.), the work of Mia Brownell is really engag ing. This is not only in an artis tic sense, but con cep tu ally as the viewer is pre sented with the manip u la tion of fruits and poultry.
Mia presents food in a rather unromantic way. An earlier series titled G(l)aze objectifies food and positions roosters in uncompromising situations the way that past figurative painters have por trayed the female. Her newest body of work, currently on preview, is a series titled Stomach Acid Dreams. The work resembles 17th-century Dutch still life painting and combines it with the fascination of genetics and the building blocks of life. I like that Mia's work challenges a way to look at food, and is very fitting with recent popularization of the way we look at the food industry and things like the Slow Food move ment.

Blog 2010
I found this wonderful painting by Mia Brownell that summed up how I felt about food. I feel it also relates to the book I'm reading. The piece is part of a series titled "adventures of a reluctant omnivore"

Blog 2010
I never was really on board with still-life paintings of a fruit basket or flowers in a vase. But I could comfortably hang the work of Mia Brownell in my home. I never tire of her paintings due to the powerful movement and flow they have.

E-mail 2010
I have recently met your work in Hi Fructose, and was instantly captivated. Your swirling fruit still lives remind me of a dream where nature comes alive unexpectedly in an expressive dance to tell us something about ourselves. ...

E-mail 2009
This afternoon while looking through Art magazines in Barnes and Noble we found a wonderful article about you and your artwork in Hi-Fructose Vol. 13. It was so nice seeing your paintings in such great reproductions and knowing that you are prospering as an artist. I love your advice to young artists; however, I think it is good advice for anyone who wants to live in an exciting world. "Try and keep pace with the evolution of your imagination". WOW
.... PS Do you mind if I use your quote in my e-mail signature giving you as the source. PPS Try and keep pace with the evolution of your imagination --Mia Brownell, Artist

E-mail 2009
Thank goodness for Hi-Fructose. I love your work because it is fresh, new and interesting. I would love to see it in person. Any plans on showing in/around Seattle?

E-mail 2009:
I currently attend the Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago majoring in Visual Communications. For one of the classes, me and several others in my class, were given the task to design and create a magazine from concept to completion. The magazine that we decided to design is a non-profit, limited-run, single issue that is based upon all the different arts of the world. So from this, we narrowed down the departments of the magazine into six; print, illustration, photography, digital, mixed media, and music.
.... I am telling you this because I absolutely love your style of painting. It is very wild, organic, and fun, but yet elegant in its complexity, and I would very much love to be able to incorporate your wonderful style into our magazine.

E-mail 2009:
I have never had the pleasure of meeting you, but I have seen your work in Boston at the Judy Goldman gallery. I was intrigued by your paintings and referenced your work in my MFA thesis and graduating art talk (I graduated from the Art Institute of Boston in 2008).
Anyway, I'm putting together a proposal for a group show at the Newton Art Center on the theme of symbolism, and immediately thought of your work. When I went to your website, however, I saw that you are having solo shows in Chelsea, so your career is probably advancing way beyond group shows at local venues...but, it was a good excuse to contact you and tell you how much I admire your work.

 ...yet, if there is any interest on your part in being included in this proposal, by all means feel free to correspond with me. Thanks, and the very best of luck from a fan.



E-mail 2008:
Your work was recommended to me by a friend of mine. She told me to look you up and i gotta say your work is AMAZING! I love your play of light and the realistic quality of your rendering harmonized by your sense of line and shape. Your images envoke, for me, a deeper unification of different things in this world that I am just beginning to explore and understand. Like how the pear shapes and lines set against a dark background stir images of electricity and light bulbs while simultaneously envoking earthy growth with these vine-like shapes that also start to look like wispy smoke forms... It's stimulating and refreshing. I'm very glad i got to see some of your work but i would very much like to find out if you have any upcoming shows or exhibitions in the NYC/Long Island area. If you do, could you please send me information on it, i would love to see your work up close... and personal. Thank you.

E-mail 2008:
I am standing here in Artspace looking at Still Life with Double Double, completely thunderstruck. It's the pears that make the piece. I'm a clinician, not a molecular biologist, but I know a geek's wet dream when I see one, and by NOT ACTUALLY SHOWING a DNA spiral, you are a consummate tease.
Let's hypothetically suppose I wanted to commission such a piece, however--DNA in grapes, proteins as pears and bananas flying around, etc.; how much would it cost? Figure same size. And before you get your hopes up, I'm in no position to pay for it right now; I only just moved to New Haven, but I occasionally serve on institutional art acquisition committees because I have an interest in such things.
And your piece is the best one here (although Somnabulist gives you a run for your money, I have to say).

E-mail 2007:
I want to introduce myself. My name is XX I would label myself as a collector who is a former Manhattan resident currently living in Palm Springs, CA. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have acquired three of your original works and think your "artisanship" is phenomenal. The way you "demensionalize" your subject(s) with light and incredible detail makes your paintings seem so multidimensional and extremely delicious.

E-mail 2007:
I bought two of your paintings in the spring of 2006 from Metaphor in Brooklyn. They have been my companions through a terrible year in my life when many emotional traumas occurred, and I wondered if you would like to know how much they mean to me...I first saw them at Rockland Center for the Arts months before and could not forget those paintings (they were the pair of small ones with the dark Spanish background like a Bodegon style painting.) Fate intervened--when I finally went to Metaphor, many months later, all the other paintings from the show had already sold except the two I couldn't forget. Although lacking a budget for this, I bought them anyway. I live in a small house and the small paintings came in like friends. I lived in South America for over a year (Brazil) when I was in Graduate School and am very fond of Renaissance-era still lifes from the Iberian peninsula, which is why I connected to those two pieces. I like to look at them and think about the margin between "man-made" and "natural" -- or more fundamentally, that there may not actually be a line between these socially created ideas. Also, I like to look at the graceful floating lines of stems and thorns linking the luscious parts -- clarity and light. Those paintings are so connected to the natural world and completely not phoney. Those are qualities I deeply admire. Best of luck in the future with whatever you do next!

Blog 2006:
On the first floor: Two nice still life paintings, which gave me a wired feelings, since they looked like internal organs turned into fruits due to traveling in hyperspace in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.