Self-Reflection
Brown scrutinized every angle of her evolving identity, including her physical appearance. In 1972, she painted a group of small, bust-length self-portraits. In Self-Portrait with Knit Hat, she wears a stylish cap; a healthy blush sweeps across her high cheekbones and her delicate lips are painted crimson. This is a woman who recognizes and appreciates her own beauty. By contrast, in Self-Portrait with Scarf (aka Woman in Scarf), Brown's skin is blotchy and her ears jarringly stick out from the tight wrap around her head. She is the subject in these self-portraits, but not as a sexualized object, as was the norm in much of Western art history. She took a hard look at herself and examined the complicated and contradictory feelings that women have about beauty – to be attractive or taken seriously, beautiful or ignored. In these works, the props that characterize the narrative paintings are gone: the artist gazes steadily back at the viewer from a flat, monochrome background. The penetrating and unsettling stare is actually directed toward the artist, not the viewer. Brown noted: "Looking in the mirror, becoming a spectator, literally describing myself, is a very graphic way of being introspective."12 Through this careful observation of self, Brown subverted the male gaze, although to her, the only important gaze would have been her own.
Brown's pioneering use of domestic imagery, autobiographical narrative, and self-revelatory emotional scenarios clearly reflects the new aesthetic territory forged by women artists in the 1970s. However, Brown was an exemplar of feminism rather than a follower. She had a tough sense of artistic identity and initially eschewed feminist thinking, fearing that participation in the women's movement would trivialize her art. Her painting was motivated by personal thought and experience rather than any political ideology:
The more I am able to express the various dimensions of myself, the richer and freer the art will be. I'm not any one thing: I'm not just a teacher, I'm not just a mother, I'm not just a painter, I'm all these things plus, and the more areas I can tap, the richer each one of the others will be.13
