Brown studied painting at the University of California, Davis, where the faculty included Wayne Thiebaud, William T. Wiley, Roy de Forest, and Robert Arneson. His interests touched upon the American and British Pop Art movements, the role of media in visual culture, and the representation of history. Subjects for his works and series have included abstracted scenes of war and soldiers, landscapes based on images from movies, and works based on photographs. When asked about his work, however, Brown says: “The subject matter comes and goes, but all the paintings deal with issues that are purely painterly. Like issues of light and movement and depiction.”