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73 ‘There’s a real relaTionship in a porTraiT. You wanT To show The person as TheY are and how You feel abouT Them. so iT TaughT me a loT abouT The power of painTing.’ Andy Brown “It was to do with the (British) Empire,” says Brown as he explains why he used teabags as a medium. “What sums up the Empire? Tea. We love our tea. It (is) such a British thing. It seemed rather appropriate.” Since then, Brown has been a globetrotter, keeping travelogues of his journeys and collecting quick drawings in Moleskine notebooks, which he has shared at exhibitions around Seoul. The question of identity is a thread tying Brown’s works together. This concept came up especially strong under his alias, Raymond Firebrace, in 2008. Under the pseudonym, Brown painted pieces documenting Firebrace’s life from his own memories and the memories of those he found on Google Images, modifying a few details to mythologize his alter ego. The “If you don’t know me by now…” show, a name he took from the song by Simply Red, exhibited as part of the Chorlton Arts Festival that year. “It (Raymond) was my dad’s first name. My dad always said to be a prop- er painter, you need a famous-sound- ing surname, like Firebrace; Brown’s not famous sounding enough. So Ray- mond Firebrace was this artist that I created.” Acting as Firebrace’s art agent, Brown presented his own works as Firebrace’s. “I just didn’t want to paint as me anymore,” Brown says. “I try to force myself to paint in new ways.” When he finds himself in a som- ber place, he dabbles in a series of self-portrait works, characterized by darker colors usually absent in his oth- er works. “There’s a real relationship in a portrait,” Brown says. “You want to show the person as they are and how you feel about them.” This, he says, is the “power of painting.” Brown recently returned from a trip in the Philippines. His Samsung tablet holds the quick drawings he made of the sceneries and people he met there. Brown hopes to curate them into another exhibition in Seoul, musing on the possibility of a Samsung partnership to show what can be done with their products. Aside from this idea, Brown has a few current projects. “Men on Lad- ders,” a compilation of photographs of men on ladders fixing things, is particularly interesting. “They’re like the silent heroes,” Brown says. Aside from the photo project, Brown says he wants to step back into the world of portrait painting. He recently forayed into the world of boxing to paint a boxer. It’s odd, he says, because the boxer is “a really nice guy, doesn’t drink, doesn’t party. But then he’s boxing and he’s going to smash somebody’s head in. He wants to be the best and you see the brutality of life or com- petition or human instinct.” The theme of identity seems to inherently tie all of Brown’s works together. “I’m interested in that and the little men doing the heroic work,” he says. “I think maybe it’s a thing about not being judgmental about the good and the bad. There’s good and bad in everything. But it’s just life. It’s just constant. It’s the yin and yang.”