During the Great Depression, Brown's widowed mother-in-law moved in with the family to help with the housekeeping and childcare, so that he and his wife could pursue their careers.
[8][9] After graduating from the John Herron Art Institute in 1916, Brown taught at Wingate and Mitchell, Indiana, for two years.
[1][2][3] As Brown pursued a career as an art educator, his artistic progress earned him recognition as a talented painter.
Brown regularly exhibited his art at Hoosier Salon shows between 1922 and 1964, where he won a number of cash awards for his oils, pastels, and watercolors in 1925, 1926, 1928, 1929, 1937, and in 1945.
Unlike many other impressionists of the era, Brown expanded the boundaries of Impressionism beyond many of his contemporaries, including departures that encompassed both the Fauve and Expressionist movements.
In his artistic expressions, Brown experimented with bold colors and, often, nearly formless subject matter that was intertwined with atmospherics and light in a manner similar in stubstance to Charles Burchfield's watercolors and Vincent van Gogh's signature style, especially when Brown worked in egg tempera or in oils.
Among his peers, Brown's interpretation of atmospherics was regarded as vastly superior to many of his older colleagues, who largely sacrificed their conservative palettes in order to exploit a more decorative artificiality.
Brown's use of brightly-pigmented tempera, which created a depth and texture similar to that found in many of the great Post-Impressionist painters, appears to amplify the effects of atmospherics and light.
After his death on April 14, 1971, at the age of eighty,[1] the Muncie Star described Brown's work as art which "didn’t attempt to cure the World’s ills or point out a message.
"[citation needed] Brown's imagery and style greatly expanded the scope of basic Midwestern impressionism far beyond those of his contemporaries.
[1][6] Brown's portrait was painted by Wayman Elbridge Adams, who studied at the Herron School of Art and was known for his portraiture that included prominent artists, political leaders, and authors such as Booth Tarkington.