Theophilius Brown had grown up in an intellectual environment and gone to Yale where he continued to travel in cultural circles.

But when he got to his graduate studio program at Berkeley, everything changed. He almost immediately was in thrall to David Park, Elmer Bischoff and Richard Diebenkorn and was able to sketch with them. And he met the man who was to become his life partner and painting partner: Paul Wonner.

He also went to Europe and was influenced by the Italians like de Chirico and a sense of mystery and allegory began to pervade his work. He painted moons and stars and symbols. Brown joined Wonner in Davis after a year. Both of the artists suggest pre cursors to Eric Fischl with his randy backyards and seasides, per Caroline Jones.

Brown, like Wonner, took figuration a step further and this painting, The Swing, from 1966, still I believe in the collection of the Mardesich Family, loads a dynamism and narrative previously unseen in the more studied, posed works of Gen 1 of Bay Area Figurative.

In The Swing, instead of two men, this is a man pushing a woman, somewhat mysteriously, in the air. It's only after a moment you notice her hanging onto the filament of rope. We are still seaside. The picture plane is bisected at a diagonal cutting across the expanse of blue sky and sand. It is so new and different that it seems almost revolutionary. The man almost looks like a satyr. The woman is bound by rope, even if tenuously. What if she lets go? It's erotic. It's free. It contains movement. And a little thrill.

Alas, very few of Brown's paintings from this period survive.

The couple ended up in Santa Monica and became close with Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, the famous Canyon gay couple, among other luminaries, but Brown ended up back in San Francisco. He died in 2012 at 92. When he fact checked his Wikipedia entry, he found his designation as an AbEx painter, 'horseshit". I love that!