Deborah Brown

She is well known in Ireland for her pioneering exploration of the medium of fibre glass in the 1960s and established herself as one of the country's leading sculptors, achieving extensive international acclaim.

[3] Brown credited her Mother for instilling in her a love of animals, and along with the rural life of picking potatoes, cutting hay and turf, left an indelible mark on her work.

[7] In Dublin she studied under Sean Keating, Maurice MacGonigal, Lucy Charles, and Professor Herkner who taught sculpture, and in addition she attended the National University under Françoise Henry to learn art-history.

Brown joined a group with artist and musician Michael Morrow and friends, where she played bass viol, having been classically trained in piano and cello at a young age.

[8] Brown's abstract paintings were heavily influenced by the works of Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Antoni Tàpies, Lucio Fontana and William Scott.

[11] Upon returning to Belfast in 1951, Brown made preparations for her first solo exhibition at the CEMA Gallery, for which the poet John Hewitt contributed an introduction to the catalogue.

Her pictures Man and Ropes and Riviera Port, well defined and carefully abstracted, contrast in form with Deborah Brown's freer Oil Over Tempra,[sic] 1959.

In 1960, Brown was appointed one of seven trustees of the newly formed Lyric Players Trust including TP Flanagan and John Hewitt.

[17] Brown travelled throughout the northern Italy in the 1960s, to Rome, Sienna, Florence and Ravenna, where she studied the works of Botticelli, Donatello, Michaelangelo and Fontana.

[18] Brown became a member of the Free Painters and Sculptors and the Women's International Art Club in the early 1960s, and worked in her father's office to supplement her income.

She went on to take her professional exams in Chattels and Fine Arts, providing her with an in depth knowledge of the history of furniture, silver, porcelain and painting, as well as the laws of surveying, bookkeeping and property.

[29] A Brown self-portrait was amongst 15 new exhibits inaugurated to the National Self Portrait Collection of Ireland in a show at the Kneafsey Gallery, Limerick, in spring 1987.