From The Big Easy to The Old Pueblo

Artist Cliff Brown:

New to Tucson. Not New to Murals.

by:

Randy Garsee

     Cliff Brown may very well be Tucson's newest muralist. He says he moved from New Orleans to Tucson just over two months ago. Two months!?! And look at the mural he's already working on. Clearly, Mr. Brown never allowed that Louisiana moss to grow under his feet and the Sonoran Desert caliche isn't slowing him down either.

     In our e-mail interview, Brown told me, "I started painting murals when I was in high school in New Jersey. I love doing large pieces of work. While living in Northern Ireland I painted over 300 hundred pieces of art in five years. The best pieces were my murals that were not political murals. The mural here in Tucson is fun. As you can see by the Roadrunner Hostel mural (pictured here) the Arizona night scene is more my style of painting.

     "The Roadrunner mural was my first and now I am working on my third one for the hostel," Brown wrote. "I got the job by just asking if I could paint one mural. We bartered for it."
Brown added he's passed through Tucson many times and decided to stop and stay a while because he was "fascinated with the cactus and the rest, as they say, is history."

     Brown said he's traveled to a few countries, including the aforementioned Northern Ireland and Canada, working as an artist. "I'm as full-time as one can get as an artist. I teach art as well."

     But the muralist is about to run out of room on the Roadrunner and he's already eyeing a bigger project. "I have a few new artist friends here at the Hostel and we are looking into doing a Celtic mural on the Rialto building. If we do, it will be at least 30 feet tall and 20 feet wide. The theme is Celtic and it would consist of four panels celebrating the Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Hugo O'Connor, founder of Tucson."

     If you'd like to see Cliff Brown's work, run on over to the Roadrunner Hostel & Inn. It's located at 346 E. 12th St.

     Meanwhile, here are some other examples of Cliff Brown's work.