Tony Brown began to draw as a child with crayons on carefully-opened brown grocery bags laid out on the kitchen floor. His art teacher in high school recognized Tony’s talent, made special time for him to learn, and encouraged him to be an artist. As a fifteen-year old, Tony was commissioned to paint the scene of the baptism of Jesus of Nazareth on the wall behind the baptismal pool of Mt. Zion Baptist Church, his church, in West Atco, New Jersey. Painted in acrylics, the painting though faint is still there 50 years later.

After high school, Tony studied at The Philadelphia College of Art for two years, majoring in illustration. He then worked as a draftsman designing turbine engines for Westinghouse. Subsequently he worked as a manager in social welfare organizations for the mentally disadvantaged. He has continued to paint throughout his life, developing a distinctive style. He now lives in Maine with “my beautiful and loving partner Langston” and focusses on his art.

Tony is nationally and internationally recognized for his distinctive style and subject matter. Indeed, his style is so distinctive that his work is recognized even without seeing his signature. Some of his artwork even turns up unexpectedly on websites in Europe and the United States.

Tony’s art appeared twice on the cover of Bulk Male magazine, the only times the magazine featured an artist and not a photo. For seven years in the 1990s he served as the official artist for the international Affiliated Big Men’s Club. He did the artwork for the club’s annual convention newsletter and its program book and acquired a wide following.

A reviewer of his work in the gay national newspaper The Advocate called him the big man’s Tom of Finland.

Tony paints in acrylics, a form of plastic that dries fairly quickly and reflects light with a crisp bright modern quality. Acrylics also allow the artist to present the objects on the canvas clearly and with greater definition than with oils or watercolors. Tony’s work has several major themes.

One major theme is the celebration of large men, either nude or draped. The buff muscular “stud” is widely celebrated in gay culture, but Tony shows that large men can also be sexy and attractive. While his subjects are usually presented as nudes and might be called “erotic,” they are not in any way pornographic or vulgar. The closest comparison as nudes would be to Greek sculptures or the paintings of artists like Caravaggio, where not the sexuality but the sensuality and natural beauty of the human body are presented. For men who are large, not often by choice, this is very much appreciated, since Tony shows how they too can be beautiful and attractive.

Tony often juxtaposes mass and the ethereal, as in his “chubby cherubs” series. Again he celebrates the sensual attractiveness of large men but does so with wit. He suggests that large men can be angelic, can be light as butterflies, and can defy gravity. In these paintings, large men often have light wings or float or even ride a swan. Somehow, it looks perfectly normal for them to appear this way, and this is part of Tony’s genius.

A third dominant theme is to elevate certain popular gay male ideals but in the form of large men, such as the fireman, the policeman, the mechanic, and the construction worker. For Tony, it is not the large basket that counts but the large man. Occasionally---and these paintings are often crowd pleasers---Tony paints big men in some kind of sexual activity. At first, the viewer may not see this. Then the viewer realizes that one man is mounting another, or sees a recipient’s ecstatic smug “burst of pleasure,” or understands that three angels are revealing the decidedly masculine part of their glory to one another. Again, though, Tony celebrates the body, not the act.

Over the years, Tony has depicted harlequins, sometimes alone and sometimes in groups. This is a variation on the large man theme, since all are large, but all are in costume. Tony likes the colors, how they contrast and present together, the fun implied, and the underlying premise that large men can be attractive, sensual, and interesting.

Tony paints flowers, well. His colors, arrangement, harmony, and depiction of natural qualities make his flowers very beautiful. Sometimes flowers are the sole subject of the painting. The flowers often are lilies or lilacs, but they might also be wildflowers.

Sometimes flowers are used as boundaries for another subject, such as a large man. Tony’s “Ride a White Swan” features a large man riding a white swan quite convincingly in a setting of lilacs---all very naturally. In “Earth,” a painting in the Earth, Air, and Water series, a seated man with butterfly wings wears a corona of wildflowers whose colors and shapes complement the figure, work well with the colors of the entire painting, enhance the theme, and are themselves very beautiful.

Tony also uses streamers to good effect to enhance the sense of lightness and airiness. The streamers themselves are very beautiful. He has also used streamers as wall decorations.

Drapery is used in Tony’s paintings to create a sense of the demure, a sense of modesty, while actually adding to the overall sensuality of the scene.

While Tony has not yet used in his paintings the technique of marbleizing---layering several colors with a sponge to create the effect of marble---he has done so on walls in private homes to great effect. In his own home, one of the bedrooms known as the Tulip Room features walls painted with the deep red, orange, and yellow seen in tulips, set off with blue. The resulting beautiful colors and patterns are so rich that nothing is hung on the walls!

Tony believes that his best work is yet to come during the period ahead. “I have not painted my masterpiece yet, but I feel that I will paint it very soon.” Needless to say, Tony has sold paintings at exhibitions and at art walks, as well as cards and prints of his works. He modestly says, “It gives me joy when my art puts a smile on someone’s face.”