"Winterreise 17, Mark Brown's stripe painting on birch panels, is a trip into the void. Unlike Barnett Newman's zip paintings, which imply speed and a mystical state glimpsed through a sluice in a field of color, Winterreise 17- with its super-sized zip that is a vast black hole- implies stasis and existential questioning. This is a world in which heroic action is needed to confront the unknown."

Roberta Fallon, critic, artblog, ORDER(ED) exhibition catalog

"Mark Brown's Winterreise is an incarnation of that word-music intersection, an intersection where the artist's profound response to the music and poetry is transformed into a creative act of immense daring. To trust in the truth of Schubert's Winterreise is to trust in the truth of art."

Dr. Janet I. Wasserman, Executive Director, Schubert Society of the USA

"Mark Brown steals the show with his subtly compelling abstract paintings...His labored, obsessively reworked canvases with thick impastos and dripping paint eloquently express the act of painting. This emphasis on seductive, tactile surfaces results in dense, concentrated and powerful works...beautifully painted surfaces...held together by tightly composed geometric forms."

"Mark Brown's [painting] is exceptionally strong; a densely textured, painterly surface that has a great sense of movement and rhythm."

Linda Dougherty, Curator of Contemporary Art, North Carolina Museum of Art

"...serious and disciplined, Mark Brown's sober, architectural blocks of astutely adjusted color pulsate..."

Katy Kline, Director, Bowdoin Museum of Art

"Mark Brown, one of the five artists in this show who have been in previous triennials, has a sure sense of pictorial composition. The rectangularly shaped notes of his sound architecture advance and recede through the layers and layers of paint put on with palette knife and paint brush. Drips relieve the rectilinearity, and the application of glazes alters the finish from matte to shiny. Some of the forms have a built-up edge which adds further surface variety. These stately paintings-- sober-minded but soulful-- ultimately exercise a seductive attraction. The care with which they have been constructed and the assured handling of color reflect a pleasure in their making that communicates itself to the viewer. ...to appreciate the structural coherence and depth of feeling in these paintings."

Huston Paschal, Associate Curator of Modern Art, NC Museum of Art

"...The scale of these monochromatic paintings, executed only in white, black and gray, belies their intensity and power... ...Brown magically explores subtle effects of paint - here, making it mimic birch bark, there, directing it into infinite, tiny rivulets. These paintings are also developing into commanding larger-scale works, evidenced with the triptych "Winterreise 31."

Michele Natale, critic, Raleigh News & Observer

"For my money, abstraction makes the biggest impact in this show, beginning with Mark Brown's very impressive large geometric canvas, 'Psalm'..."

"Mark Brown's [painting] is outstanding..."

Blue Greenburg, critic, Durham Herald-Sun

"Mark Brown's paintings suggest an urban sensibility. His concept of space is statically monumental like urban architecture. Though the handling of space is highly structured, within his painting subtle swirls of texture and implied motion challenge the premise of the structure."

Joseph Walentini, Editor, AbstractArtOnline

"Remember, Mr. Brown, Mondrian died for our sins"

Peter Plagens, painter and critic

"...the remarkable transformation that has occurred... the images that Brown comes up with rely on "chance" formations. He doesn't blueprint a drawing and fill in "spaces" with color...all the elements in his painting are developed together into one synchronous and diverse structure. Multiple possibilities are tried, sorted out, covered over or found acceptable by the artist's response to their perceptual effects..."

Edwin Ruda, painter, New York, NY