The Mary Julia Paintings of Joan Brown

Literary Nonfiction. Art. William Benton ran a Santa Fe art gallery in the 1970s where he showed the work of Bay Area figurative painter Joan Brown. In THE MARY JULIA PAINTINGS OF JOAN BROWN, poet and novelist Benton deftly weaves a tribute to Brown (seventeen of her paintings are reproduced) and a meditation on love and his late ex-wife.

"Written with clarity and a deceptive, beguiling simplicity, Benton's text wanders into very personal terrain, something art writing usually avoids but perhaps shouldn't."—Lilly Wei, art critic and curator