Interview with Owen Brown

Meet NUNUM's Contributor: Owen Brown

2/7/2026

NUNUM

Blending Flash Fiction & Art

Interview with Owen Brown

What was the first book you remember picking and reading yourself?

I started reading at a very early age, and although our public library had a strict limit of two books a week, my mother made a deal with the librarian to allow me to take out as many books as I wanted! Result: I read the entire children’s section before I had two numbers to my age. Impossible to remember the first book: but I was mad for series: Freddy the Pig, the Moominfamiy, L’Engle’s books, Beverly Cleary, Joan Aiken, C.S. Lewis… and I suspect, though, that my very first book might have been Green Eggs and Ham.

What was the last book you read that made you say damn, that was a good book?

Nonfiction: Ramsey MacMullen’s Feelings in History. Fiction Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto.

Which artists have influenced your current artistic direction?

Everyone I look at gives me food for thought. But consistently, painters such as Diebenkorn, Sargent, Rembrandt, Tiepolo, Monet, Beckmann, Twombly, Kiefer, Tamayo. Conceptual artists: Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys, Yee Sookyun, Lee Ufan, Rebecca Horn. Directors: Godard, Linklater, Rivette, Welles, Lars von Trier … there are so many!

Is there an artist in your local community that you would recommend people check out?

Yes, three just down the hall from me in Minneapolis! Morgan Mercer, Rita Dungey, Mary Meuwissen
https://morganmercer.com/
https://www.ritadungey.com/
https://www.marymeuwissen.com/

What advice would you give someone just starting to send their work to journals?

Look at the publication first: do they have a good eye and ear? If they do, then fire away – and expect to be rejected. Because you will be, five times out of six, or more. Remember that you’re writing, or painting for yourself, before you’re writing or painting for others. Remember also that without others, we are less than we could be, so don’t let rejection discourage you, and keep on firing off what you’ve got!

What could you do now that will take the you of 20 years into account?

You need to hold that person in strict affection. Maybe you should save more, or drink less. And you don’t want the Owen of 2045 to be lonely – stay married! Or to be saddened by cowardice: so stand up for others, don’t be silent in the face of rudeness, defy as you can, injustice. And look both ways crossing the street.

How can you get closer to vegetable life?

On a warmer day than today, stand out in the sun (wearing a hat) stretch out your arms, maybe lean against a wall, shut your eyes, actively listen. Take off your shirt (wear some sunscreen) and imagine what photosynthesis must feel like. Spread your fingers and wait for the wind to blow through them: those are your leaves. Stay there longer than you thought you would. Listen for birds and insects. Take off your shoes (don’t lose them!) and socks (ditto) run your feet in the dirt, and then forget them as feet. For now they’re your roots.

Do you think that the body is composed of multiple minds, and if so, are they communicating with each other?

Yes, I think we have distributed cognition. The gut has a mind of its own, individual cells seem to have some intent, we have a hormonal system that is hot-wired for the craziness of the outside environment and smart in usually keeping us out of trouble. And all these things are communicating – electrically, chemically – it’s just below/beyond/away from our comprehension today, and maybe tomorrow. This is communication follows a non-propositional framework: beyond speech, it is the story behind the story.

Artist's Statement

Uncover beauty. Evoke emotion. Excite and surprise. Identify injustice. These, then, the purposes to which art could be put. At our best we want to reveal, and repair the world.

And for these goals, thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking. The source of my practice is the world with all its beauty and confusion – nature, so alien and alluring, the social, equally baffling but no less wonderful, and the uncomfortable friction between that, and our internal interpretations. This world seems to carry on as if there aren’t a million reasons to be shocked - life eludes easy understanding or conclusion: what are we seeing when we really think about it and how did we miss it before?

To miss as little as possible, paint every day you can, on those you can't, stay attentive. Keep this in mind: Attention leads to perception, perception leads to devotion. And this devoted life is a life worth living.

Artist's Statement for the Works Appearing in This Issue

I painted these pieces in Berlin, where I spent March and April 2025 on residency at the Milchhof Kunstverein, an anarcho-artist collective that occupied a building close to where the Berlin Wall ran. I was transfixed by the Wall, whose traces lay “einen Steinwurf entfernt,” that is, “a stone’s throw,” from the Milchhof. The idea of the Wall, as well as the feelings that it elicited became my residency’s subject. What were they but a greater awareness of repression, barriers, separation, longing?

I painted every morning until mid day. In the afternoons I walked the Wall’s shadow. Something ugly happened here, and how hard not to bury it!

The bulldozer of time causes us to flee all events with the speed of seconds: we can hardly remember what we had for breakfast. Repression is commonplace, not just the fist of authoritarianism but also in everyday life – perhaps society requires it. Families have been separated before, the barrier of distance comes up because of all sorts of reasons: There are so many modern analogs to the Wall, so many enticements to dismiss the old sorrows, to deny their power.

Flip the coin and you see that the wall lives today. There’s walls in everyone’s life. When you think you should speak, but do not. When you refuse a beggar a coin. When you yearn to caress, or be caressed, but keep your hands at your side.

Fingers wringing my heart, what could I do but paint it? And even in my abstracts, what I painted was of the Wall, real places, where people are and were, where suffering and darkness was.
That much of Germany’s history is tragic is a truism. Whether we universalize it, is not. Reveal beauty. Evoke emotion. Excite and surprise. Identify injustice. These are purposes to which art could be put. Another could be: Remember from where we’ve come. That, then, seems to be a base line for my work. Remembering, noticing, is always creative, layering on, its success comes if a personal perspective can transform older evidence into something new and meaningful today.

Owen Brown was born in Chicago, trained as a pianist, took a painting class at 23, and all he’s wanted to do since then is paint. His subject matter ranges from colorful representational still life and portraiture to monotone abstraction. Brown holds degrees from Yale and the University of Chicago and studied at CCA. Once a San Francisco resident, he now lives in Minneapolis. He exhibits regularly, and his works are in collections in America and abroad ... which is exactly where Owen is now as he just started a three-month residency at LIA in Leipzig, Germany.