Three Trees, 2012
Unique digital prints
13″ x 17″

In Three Trees, the computer monitor becomes a camera lucida. Working from photographs, Brown redraws each tree by hand on screen, identifying every leaf while staying true to the original image.

The finished digital drawings are printed onto torn sketchbook paper. The ragged edges make each print a unique object, yet the image itself is infinitely reproducible. Like the cliché verre, the 19th-century process of printing hand-drawn glass plates on photographic paper, the work asks how an art object is valued: what is a physical print worth compared to the digital information that defines it?

The series is part of Brown’s ongoing fusion of drawing and painting with photography, a body of digitally crafted work that reevaluates tools and techniques from photographic history.