Neighbors: Rita Brown

Although some might see them as waste, one Sarasota resident sees more to discarded palm fronds. For Rita Brown, palm fronds are her canvas.

Brown has always been interested in art; she studied costume design at Pratt Institute in New York and has taken classes in nearly everything, from Japanese garden watercolor paintings to sculpting. Her palm-frond work is currently on display at Art Center Sarasota.

She and her husband, Foster, come to Sarasota for six months each year.

“I haven’t seen snow in 16 years,” she says with a laugh, while sitting in her lakeside home.

They bought a Sarasota home 16 years ago, after hearing about the arts and cultural amenities in the area. They are originally from Oneonta, N.Y.

Brown’s first palm-frond creation was a lion (on exhibit at Art Center Sarasota). She says the idea just came to her.

“Palm trees line the lake and, one day, while we were walking along it, I saw a palm frond and thought, ‘God, it looks just like a lion.’ It told me what is was and I just painted what was there — a lion.”

Currently, she is working on a portrait of Barack Obama, which will be the third American president she has painted (she has painted George Washington and Abraham Lincoln).

Brown has a step-by-step creative process. Behind her home she has a pile of fronds that neighbors and acquaintances have brought to her. From these, she selects her next “canvas.” Then, she applies gesso, which fills in the cracks and ridges. To ensure that the paint will settle evenly, she sands down the gesso-covered frond and begins to draw the basic outlines with pencil. She moves on with a Sharpie and begins painting the eyes first. Brown spends a few days on each piece, working at her own pace in her studio overlooking the lake.

Like a snowflake, no frond is the same. Brown likes it that way. She prefers to use the fronds that challenge her with their one-of-a-kind characteristics. As she shows her Vincent van Gogh portrait, she points out that there’s a ridge that resembled the artist’s distinct nose. She says that she instantly knew it was van Gogh.

Each piece has a story behind it. The most stunning is a red-tailed hawk that hangs in her living room.

“A friend asked me if I could make a hawk for them,” Brown says. “I knew it was going to be a challenge. I loved it.”

After she sold the piece, which included three separate fronds, Brown recreated the bird for herself.

“It’s always more fun the first time,” she says. “You don’t know where it’s going to go.”

Brown’s work is on display until April 26, at Art Center Sarasota.