Water Valley artist Adrienne Brown-David sent her husband’s youngest sibling a picture of the portrait she had done—one among a series exploring the growth, development and identities of those closest in her orbit. “Sometimes I’m taken aback by my own beauty,” came the assessment from her brother-in-law.
Brown-David chuckled anew with appreciation, recalling that declaration, the direction it took and her own response: “You just titled this entire body of work!’” Three of those striking portraits hang at the very start of the 2023 Mississippi Invitational at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, Miss. The invitational, on view at the museum through Sept. 17, 2023, is a biennial survey of recent works from contemporary artists living and working across the state.
Guest curator Katie Pfohl (pronounced “Foal”), associate curator of contemporary art at the Detroit Institute of Arts and formerly a curator at the New Orleans Museum of Art, selected Brown-David and 14 other artists to participate.
The invitational’s theme, “Gulfs among Us,” threads through the show, resonating on multiple levels: in artwork centered in this region, and as a response to rifts of all types—social, political, cultural, environmental and internal. An initial pool of 105 artists from across the state submitted applications. Those were whittled down to about 40 for studio visits or virtual meetings, then narrowed down to the show’s final 15.
“We’re really just overwhelmed by the incredible talent of the artists that we got to meet,” Pfohl said. “We could have done the show three times over.”
Space That ‘Becomes Possibility’
The faces in Brown-David’s portraits glow against rosy blank backgrounds in “Taken Aback by My Own Beauty” Nos. 1, 2 and 3. The mother of four—she has three daughters and her youngest child is nonbinary—has heavily focused on her children while creating art over the last 10 years. Through her pieces, she reflects on their childhoods, development, identities and environment, and she contrasts them with her own, she said.
“My art has grown as my kids have grown,” Brown-David explained. Settings that were once specific such as fields and other outdoor scenery in her
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