Don Brown

OCTOBER 16, 2016 - JANUARY 31, 2017

The talents of Donnell Adair Brown (1899-1958), Centenary art professor, went beyond making art to writing, navigating, and boat building. Whether at his Caddo Lake camp or sailing down the Red River en route to the Gulf of Mexico, Brown took artistic inspiration from the outdoors, especially the landscapes, flora, and fauna of East Texas and Louisiana. His art classes frequently convened at these locations, beginning the Art Department’s commitment to experiential education outside the classroom, something continued to this day.

In 1943, Brown created twenty watercolors of birds for display in Centenary’s Biology Department; only these nine paintings remain.  To prepare, he relied heavily upon the work of John James Audubon, at times changing only the settings to the local landscapes he loved. One of the birds he depicted, the ivory-billed woodpecker, has since been declared extinct, with its last definite sighting occurring the year after Brown’s painting. The ivory-billed woodpecker was a spectacular, large bird with a distinctive call that haunted southeastern woods for ages, until its numbers were diminished by logging and collectors.