Born in 1953 in Sarnia, Ontario, and passed in 2020, John Brown was a meticulous Canadian Postwar & Contemporary painter who had many of his works widely collected and exhibited by institutions such as the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada Council Art Bank, Claridge Collection located in Montreal, the Cadillac Fairview Corporation, the Donovan Collection, Oakville Galleries. Brown graduated from the Ontario College of Art in Toronto and obtained a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Guelph, and has been a notable presence in the Toronto art scene since the 80s. Much of Brown's early and middle work focuses on the human body, head, and face, grappling with how to depict the human figure by exploring how much he can strip away. He painted in a manner where he applied layers of oil paint and scraped away at the paint to create works that reveal themselves through a history of their own development.