Considered part of the second generation of the Bay Area Figurative movement, influential artist Joan Brown obsessively painted everyday imagery from her own life: domestic scenes, swimming excursions in the San Francisco bay, or outings to the opera with her husband. In a predominantly flat, decorative style, Brown painted figures and animals in fanciful scenarios; enamored with ancient Egyptian art and mythology, she would often paint silhouettes and human-animal hybrids such as the sphinx. Though she denied having any explicit feminist agenda, her subject matter aligned closely with the psychological imperatives of feminist art; her images displayed the artist’s introspective spiritual life. Elmer Bischoff was a mentor and teacher.