Pier Arts Centre

Erlend Brown, Painter and Print-maker

January 25 1947 - July 25 2022

Erlend Brown grew up in the small seaport of Stromness in Orkney, where the Brown family had lived for many generations. His playground was the winding street and closes, and the harbour where flatties and dinghies were ready to row and splash around the piers, or go fishing for cuithes and mackerel.   

Stromness was immortalised by Erlend’s celebrated uncle, George Mackay Brown: ‘There was a harmony in the web of creation … Stromness (Hamnavoe) came last into the pattern, with piers, fishing boats, ships, and the lovely scrawl of stone houses under Brinkie’s Brae.’

Erlend shared George’s skills as a footballer, but while George then chose literature, a strong aptitude in the visual arts led Erlend to graduate in Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art. A travelling scholarship then enabled him to study Art in Italy. He returned to Orkney and spent eight years teaching, finally as Head of Art at Stromness Academy.

On the opening of the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, with its collection of leading British contemporary artists, he became its first Curator. Over more than a decade he exhibited many promising young artists, from home and away, giving the Pier the international reputation it deserves. All this time Erlend was developing his own work, drawing on the life and paraphernalia of the surrounding piers and harbour. Now recognised as a Scottish painter and print-maker of note, his first one-man show took place in 1983 in the Richard Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh.

At length Erlend left the Pier Arts Centre to paint full time, and as a part time fireman. The resulting ‘Pier and Ocean’ was staged at the Pier in 1993. Never a loner, his friendly interest in others led to a number of group projects. A shared exhibition ‘Shorelines’ toured Scotland and Denmark. The ‘Swiss Orcadian Conflux’ was a multi-media project that brought together eighteen Orkney and Swiss artists, photographers, film-makers, composers and musicians, to share exhibitions and performances in Orkney and Switzerland. In Erlend’s own words, ‘It is the kind of experience which can quicken the imagination and give birth to new work.’

Erlend’s paintings feature in ‘Sails in St Magnus’, the series of banners prepared by four artists to hang in St Magnus Cathedral, celebrating St Rognvald’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He illustrated a number of books, including works published by the Orkney Press, and Portrait of Orkney by George Mackay Brown.

For a time, Erlend was based in Switzerland with his partner Lea Schültz-Cohen. He then returned to Orkney to live and work in Birsay at his beloved Breck, by the Boardhouse Loch. Here he took part in community life, leading guided tours of the Boardhouse Mill.

Erlend is survived by Lea, Martin and family, Ingirid and John.

by Bryce Wilson