Susan Friedman: Kelly Street Gallery Coming Soon

Half Moon Bay coastside doctor and Kelly Street Gallery founder, Deborah Brown-Penrose, says she has lived her entire life as an artist: “The doctor (part) was an afterthought,” she said — an endeavor she pursued after marriage and having children. Penrose earned a bachelor’s degree in fine art from the Moore College of Art and Design in the 1960s and, following graduation, worked as a fashion illustrator for a department store in New York. One of Penrose’s early claims to fame was having her illustrations featured daily in a New York Times advertisement. Now, this artist has devoted part of her Half Moon Bay home to an elegant photo gallery — showcasing the work of other talented Coastside photographers in addition to her own.
When did you first consider yourself a photographer?
The year 2000, I guess. I went to Italy — Tuscany — to paint and found that I couldn’t paint and didn’t really want to paint. So I took photographs instead and had an excellent response from the work I had done.
What attracted you to photography?
I think in my art, with the exception of figure drawing, I always felt that I was copying other people’s work. And yet, I knew I had a really good eye and had a gift for composition and color and seizing the moment.  I didn’t really get attracted to photography.  I took photographs in the beginning because I didn’t want to paint and when I looked at the photographs I realized they were good and that they were worthwhile.
Share some of your artistic process. What do you like to capture in your work?
I think right now I’m mostly about color. Actually I have two fortes, I think: One is candid portraits–but they’re not very sellable — and the other has to do with color and composition, I guess. It can be nature, it can be found objects, it can be landscapes or architecture… it can be almost anything. It’s the color and the shape and the composition that attract me.
What artists do you most admire?
All artists — I have no favorites. Just like colors, I have no favorites.
Anything you’d like to add?
I think photography has taken a turn. With the use of the digital camera and programs like Photoshop we can paint with our photography. And by that I don’t mean create a painting, but use photography as a media in which we can change and alter forms so that we come out with something very different from what the eye beholds originally. I did a whole series of abstract things. When I went to Italy the last time I got so bored with the cobblestone streets and the geraniums in the windows and the cats and lace curtains and so I just did architectural detail and then I put it into Photoshop and blew it up and altered it and manipulated it and changed it and I got these wonderful images that looked like abstract paintings. They’re really very very interesting.