Bio: Lloyd Brown studied Fine Arts - Painting at the University of Texas @ Arlington.  His primary painting and drawing instructors were Gene Turner and Calvin Grigg. He also studied abstract painting with mentor and friend Frank Hursh of Black Mountain College.  He then went on to study Interior Design at the University of Texas and was awarded scholarships for competitive design portfolios.  During university, Lloyd worked for architects and upon graduation became a retail store designer/planner in the Houston firm of Richard Roeder Associates, designing stores for Federated Retail (Belk's and Foleys'). Lloyd was drafted into military service during the Vietnam era and managed to serve as a combat zone artist for the US Navy in Vietnam 1969 -1970.  In Vietnam he became engaged with Buddhist iconography and related practices. Post military, he pursued his career in the architectural design and illustration field eventually directing the Interior Design Department for a major firm in San Antonio, Texas.  After some years in San Antonio he relocated to Portland, Oregon to work with a commercial design firm doing projects for a US Senator and for international companies in the Pacific Northwest.  In 1984, Lloyd moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico to continue his architectural design and illustrations career.  He authored several projects which were published in popular design magazines. Creative Transitions  By 2009 Lloyd transitioned to studio painting full time after returning  to New Mexico.   He was a juried member of the Santa Fe Society of Artists.  Santa Fe galleries that have featured Lloyd's work include Edith Lambert Gallery on Canyon Road, Wheelhouse Gallery in the Railyard District and The (original) Artists Gallery on Galisteo Street.  Still painting in his studio/workshop today in Albuquerque, NM, Lloyd offers practical workshops and produces Youtube videos to help others discover and embrace their creativity through painting and mixed media.  During the Covid pandemic, Lloyd has offered his skills as an instructor via Zoom to isolated adult individuals. Artist Intent and Purpose "I work to express an experiential truth, in visual terms, of how I know the world directly.  This experience is where the painting's progress arises from a kind of listening along with, and inside of, the doing that makes the work.  My experience is a direct perception that manifests before any memory, or concepts arise.  I answer to a kind of longing that is the source for beauty.  Often that appears in surprising and unexpected ways.  In my studio, insights arise, often unpredictably, as I work along.  I have learned that if I quickly get in where I don't clearly know just exactly what I'm doing, that something is usually provoked, from out of the 'chaos'.  Soon enough the work to be done chases ME down - not the other way around.” “I also enjoy working with mixed media in the spirit of the Surrealists who introduced the idea of non-logical juxtaposition of unrelated images. By combining normally unrelated visual ideas in the same manner, I want to  provoke and realize an appreciation of aesthetic mystery.  This I find, is at the root of any creative process.  Too much of the painter in a painting and the source of natural Is-ness cannot light up that kind of knowing via the senses.  This need not be consciously apparent to the viewer but a viewer can, nevertheless, have a sense of it through direct experience of it, something like the taste of a delicious fruit.“ Thoughts about art workshops in the time of Covid:   I take the challenge of remaining present to what's happening right into my studio when I work.  I can only offer demos from this experience as well when I give on-line sessions.  All I have to impart is my own direct experience while the “student” brings everything else necessary for discovery.  Every student is perfectly equipped to do this.  I am discovering that students, as well as myself, learn a most direct and enduring way of working on their art while also somehow thinking about difficult 'lock-down' situations as well as the un-ease of our times.  The creative connection is obvious to me.  In workshop situations I relate and demonstrate an ongoing experience of an Intuitive / Holistic Vitality  being coupled with known rules of design principles.  I offer ways that I have discovered to get 'unstuck' when working on art.  I model ways that I might approach an intimidating blank canvas as exactly the opportunity that leans right into creative potential, where awareness, direct perception and vitality are engaged.  A kind of shorthand explanation for this is to:  First, "make a mess" and then go right from there.  This is a way to surrender to creative energy just as it is.  It is what I use so often in the studio for my own work.  Because my work is non- representational I find that a sense of flow, or being in ‘the zone’, arises most naturally out of a kind of not knowing too much in the beginning.  I don’t think of my work as representing things in the world, but instead it is the Thing In Itself.  I hope to demonstrate my experience of that for the attending vworkshop artists.”