Colleen Browning
| Colleen Browning | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Colleen Browning 16 May 1918 Shoeburyness, England |
| Died | 22 August 2003 (aged 85) New York City, NY, U.S. |
| Nationality | English, American |
| Known for | Painter |
| Movement | Realism (art), Magic realism |
Colleen Browning (May 16, 1918 – August 22, 2003, New York, NY) was an Anglo-American realist and magical realist painter.
Colleen Browning was born 16 May 1918 in Shoeburyness, England. As a child, Browning was a gifted artist. Her parents enrolled her in the Farnham School of Arts in 1933. In 1934 she exhibited at the Women in Arts Society in London. In 1935 she attended the Salisbury School of Arts and Craft. In that year she also exhibited her drawings and paintings at the Whitechapel Gallery.
Browning attended London's Slade School of Art on a full scholarship from 1937-1939. In 1942, she worked as a mapmaker for the Royal Air Force during World War II. Browning later worked as a set designer in London for the Two Cities Film Studios, which was later to become the J. Arthur Rank Film Corporation. In 1948 Browning met the English writer Geoffrey Wagner while on vacation on the island of Ischia. They quickly decided to marry in America, where Wagner had been hired to teach at the University of Rochester.
In 1949 she emigrated to the United States, arriving in New York City. Browning became an American citizen a year later. The artist lived in New York City for the next five decades. Browning was a major figure in the realism (arts) movement in New York City during a time when Abstract Realism and the art of Jackson Pollock was beginning to rise to prominence. In particular, Browning often painted New York City and scenes of urban life. For instance her painting Holiday (1951-2) depicts a street scene that Browning captured while living on 116th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan. In 1952 she exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1953 she held a solo exhibition at the Edwin Hewitt Gallery in New York City.
In her later career, Browning created works in the style of magic realism that increasingly blurred the lines between the real and the imagined. In works such as Picture of a Painting of the Great Circus Parade (1988) and Black Umbrella (1970) the artist captures a real event but with a focus on the wonderful and a blurred sense of reality.
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