WAVES - GALEN BROWN

June - July 2026

Detail of small wave drawing, (dark blue on light blue) 2021, ink on museum board mounted on aluminum with rear wooden frame. Galen Brown

STATEMENT

Galen Brown’s Waves series extends his ongoing investigation into time, accumulation, and the perceptual structures of drawing. Executed in ink, these works translate the mutable surface of Lake Tahoe into systems of mark-making that oscillate between description and abstraction. The horizontal lines — sometimes rhythmic, sometimes fractured — trace the behavior of water through subtle modulations of density, spacing, and pressure.

Rather than pursuing the expansion of a singular image, Brown works through serial accumulation, allowing meaning to emerge from the aggregation of slight differences across a grid-like typology. The result is both optical and temporal: the viewer apprehends duration not as narrative, but as the slow accretion of gesture. The series reflects Brown’s deep engagement with the Tahoe landscape, not as motif but as generative structure — a site where repetition, memory, and observation converge to form a quiet but rigorous meditation on the passage of time.

WAVES EXHIBITION CATALOG

WAVES series

Installation view of left: small waves and right: WAVES at Melhop Gallery 2022.

The Waves series was an ongoing project by Galen Brown. In total 135 Wave drawings exploring almost every possible mark that could be made, spanning at least 15 years were made. They were shown at the Nevada Museum of Art as an entire installation in 2019 at Brown’s solo exhibition Each drawing a stand alone object, although Brown kept these together as a single installation of work.

Installation view of WAVES at Sinecere by Galen Brown at the Nevada Museum of Art 2019-2020. Curated by JoAnne Northrup. Photograph by Chris Holloway

Galen Brown — Waves / Shadowcasters

Galen Brown’s Waves series and his sculptural Shadowcasters extend a shared inquiry into time, repetition, and the memory of place. The Waves drawings translate the surface of Lake Tahoe into rhythmic accumulations of inked lines — traverses that tighten, break, and disperse, echoing the play of wind and light across water. In their serial accumulation, Brown finds a temporal structure, where each mark registers both the gesture of the hand and the duration of looking.

The Shadowcasters bring this investigation into three dimensions: elongated, linear forms whose projections recall the piers and jetties of Brown’s childhood on Tahoe’s shore. When lit, they cast tiered shadows like those wooden structures in the 1970s, extending the logic of the drawings into space. Together, the works explore how line, light, and memory converge — transforming landscape into an instrument for tracing the persistence of time.

Installation view of Prime (circa 2018) Shadow caster / drawing, 6.5 foot x 4.5” x 2.5” Ink on museum board, steel metal support. Galen Brown and right: Pulse, Shadow caster / Drawing, 12 foot x 4.5” x 2.5” Ink on museum board, steel metal support, Galen Brown

Prime (circa 2018) Shadow caster / drawing, 6.5 foot x 4.5” x 2.5” Ink on museum board, steel metal support. Galen Brown

Detail of Prime (circa 2018) Shadow caster / drawing, 6.5 foot x 4.5” x 2.5” Ink on museum board, steel metal support. Galen Brown

Pulse, Shadow caster / Drawing, 12 foot x 4.5” x 2.5” Ink on museum board, steel metal support

LONG WAVES

Untitled Long Wave (green beside green with burgundy), 4 3/4 × 19 1/4 × 1 1/2 in, 2022.

Long Waves series.

TOP: Untitled pink beside green, 2022, ink on museum board mounted on aluminum, mounted on wooden frame with aluminum backing. 4.25” x 35.5” x 1.5”

MIDDLE: Untitled, aqua beside blue, 2022, ink on museum board mounted on aluminum, mounted on wooden frame with aluminum backing, 4.75” x 32” x 1.5”

BOTTOM: Untitled, green beside red, 2022, ink on museum board mounted on aluminum, mounted on wooden frame with aluminum backing. 4” x 32” x 1.5”

Untitled (black on black beside purple), long wave drawing, ink on museum board mounted on aluminum, mounted on wooden frame with aluminum backing. 6.5” x 55.5” x 1.5” 2022. PRIVATE COLLECTION

Detail of Untitled (black on black beside purple), long wave drawing, ink on museum board mounted on aluminum, mounted on wooden frame with aluminum backing. 6.5” x 55.5” x 1.5” 2022. PRIVATE COLLECTION

SMALL WAVES

Collossal dimensional drawings had always been an integral part of Galen Brown’s output, but as his health began to fail he started to work on a smaller scale making more physically manageable artworks. Realizing time was slipping his projects and investigations into drawing and linear accumulation became more intimate and human scale and were separable rather than parts of a larger whole.