Christine Brown: A Spectrum of Creativity

Born in Poole, England in 1932, Christine Brown spent her early years in England, Chicago, and Washington, DC. Her architect father encouraged her early passion for art and design by sharing his pencils, papers, and compasses for Christine to create interesting patterns. 

Before her freshman year at Radcliffe College she worked at Seventeen magazine where she observed the people in the art department had the most interesting job. At college she directed her energy to design, one of just three women studying architecture in her class. 

Four months after she college graduation, she married Roger Brown. While he studied for graduate school, she took night art classes at the Boston museum school—pottery, and then drawing and design. She also attended classes at the Corcoran School in Washington, D.C. and during a year living in England at the London School for Arts and Crafts. 

In 1960 Christine and her family (husband Roger, son Matthew, and daughter Jennifer) moved to Lyme, NH. She continued to pursue her art—joining a portrait painting group at Dartmouth and a silkscreen class at the League of New Hampshire Arts and Crafts. After 1965 the Browns were summer residents of Lyme, spending the rest of the year in Washington, DC. In 1968 she became interested in carving wooden ducks. In the 1980s, Christine was back in Lyme, NH full-time; she has been in Lyme ever since. Today, at 91, she still messes with oils and watercolors. And she’s still carving ducks. 

For Christine, art and politics have always been interwoven. While selling woodcut prints through galleries in Washington, DC, she was lobbying for Women Strike for Peace and an end of the Vietnam War. She remembers walking around Washington with prints under one arm and briefing papers under the other.