THE ARTIST

Caleb Brown
Macon, Georgia
(b. 1994 – Fayetteville, GA)

Georgia born and raised, Caleb Brown possessed his God-given artistic talent from childhood, but he never dreamt that someday he could be proficient enough at it to turn this passion into a profession. Caleb’s early love for art was perhaps only equaled with his passion for sports. This would create the perfect mold for forming a Master Painter of Sports Art — but it would be up to Caleb to completely pour himself into it.

At age 12, as Caleb was sharpening his skill in rendering with pencil, he reached out by email to renowned Birmingham artist Daniel A. Moore for advice on the best assortment of pencils and drawing papers to use. Caleb loved Moore’s super-realistic oil paintings depicting College Football and was eager to learn anything he could from the artist. This was the beginning of a long-distance mentorship/friendship and the two began to email back and forth on a fairly regular basis.

Caleb soon began to experiment in acrylic painting and he learned more about the medium and the creative processes for painting from Moore during this time. Caleb’s favorite football player at that time happened to be Tyrone Prothro, the spectacular wide-receiver/kick returner for Alabama. Seeing that as a good inspiration for a painting, he painted Prothro on a small canvas board. He decided to mail it to his artist friend as a token of their friendship and to perhaps get a good critique in return. Surprised and moved by the gesture, and impressed with the young artist’s potential, Moore displayed and kept the small painting in his studio. He replied by email with positive feedback on the painting along with some encouragement for Caleb. Even though the two had never met face-to-face, a lasting friendship had been forged around their commonly shared loves.

After a few years the long-distance art mentorship would be put on the back burner as school, sports and other pursuits would demand the majority of Caleb’s time. At Fayette County High School he starred in Football and Track, lettering all four years in both sports. From high school, he went on to play for Mercer University’s “inaugural” football team (having been reinstated after a 72-year hiatus) while declaring Psychology as his major and Art as his minor. As a starting running back in his Freshman and Sophomore years, things were going so well that Caleb began to develop the goal to play in the NFL. But during his upperclassman years his earlier on-field successes were becoming harder and harder to find – and so, too, were his visions for an NFL career. With football seemingly now out of the big picture, art had become a more viable option for his future – even if he did not realize it at the time.

During his Junior year, Caleb enrolled in “Painting 101” and, despite what he calls an “underwhelming experience,” his art professor exposed him further into the demanding but rewarding world of art-making and even encouraged him into pursuing art professionally. His transition into art was more of a calling than something he thought about constantly. And by 2015 he was painting and selling a few portraits and getting better at it with each one he did. For the first time, he actually realized he could paint well. This was the first time as an adult that he had considered a career in art. After evaluating his own work against several other successful contemporary artists, Caleb received enough validation to begin filling the mold God had cast for him years ago. Some of his recent work is shown below.

In the winter of 2018, after a 12-year pause in his mentorship with Daniel Moore – and with two years now under his belt as a professional artist himself – Caleb decided to reach out to his old friend once again. He was actually a bit unsure that he would even be remembered by the busy artist. But, of course, Daniel remembered him right away and they set up a trip to Birmingham to meet at Moore’s New Life Art Gallery. And so, the mentorship was renewed as the questions, advice and photos of paintings once again began to flow back and forth by email.

In 2021 Caleb was beginning to explore the possibilities for producing prints to sell from his original paintings. So he arranged a trip to a printing facility in Birmingham to learn first-hand from Moore about the offset-lithographic printing process as he supervised the printing of his work. As a bit of encouragement and levity for his friend, Moore surprised Caleb by bringing along the little Prothro painting to show him just how far he had come over those many years!

Although Caleb never had any plans of pursuing art as a profession, God had a different plan in mind for him. Since beginning his journey, Caleb’s original artwork has attracted several prominent collectors – including one US President, Super Bowl MVPs, Grammy Award winners and platinum-selling recording artists. A one-man exhibition of his paintings was hosted at Macon Arts Alliance in the summer of 2022. And now, the 2023 collaboration with Daniel Moore and New Life Art, Inc. on his “Back to Back” project, commemorating Georgia’s 2021 and 2022 National Championships, marks Caleb’s Inaugural Limited Edition Print and Canvas release.