HOULTON, Maine — Denise Brown of Houlton still recalls marveling at how her pre-kindergarten daughter, Caeley, learned to hold a pencil and began whipping out vivid images of butterflies and flowers at an age when other mother’s refrigerator doors were still covered with stick figures standing next to crooked houses.
“From those first days with her pencil and animals, she just quickly graduated to drawing portraits and using other forms of medium,” Brown said, speaking of the self-taught artist who, now aged 20, will soon begin her junior year as a nursing student at the University of Maine.
And while Caeley Brown acknowledged that she definitely has talent in the field, she said she has never thought of pursuing art beyond just creating pieces “for the pure joy of it.”
Brown, a 2014 graduate of Houlton High School, is especially well known in southern Aroostook County because her mother, who works at Houlton Regional Hospital, displays her pieces for visitors. Every two to three months, Denise Brown said, visitors have lauded her daughter’s lifelike portraits of Morgan Freeman, Patrick Swayze’s magnetic gaze as he dances with Jennifer Grey in the famous scene from “Dirty Dancing”, and the piercing eyes of Leonardo Dicaprio.
Caeley Brown admitted that she had a rather unusual art education in school.
“It was mandatory in junior high and high school that you take a certain amount of art classes in order to receive your diploma,” she said. “And I was so bored in them that I wanted to quit, because they were work I had already done way before. But my teacher [Bonnie Tidd] interceded on my behalf and allowed me to pursue independent study. That allowed me to pursue my own goals, because I hate drawing under a deadline.”
Just recently, Brown said, she began painting, “which comes easier to me.”
“I often find that some of the things that I love to draw come out better with paint, too, which helps,” she said.
Over the years, her talents have benefitted not just herself but individuals across the globe. Just recently, Brown participated in a trip to the Dominican Republic through International Student Volunteers with the University of Maine. The group assisted with a children’s summer camp and helped other impoverished families. In order to raise money for the trip, Brown created a Facebook page and offered to draw pictures upon request.
“I got back home a month ago and I still have some left to do,” she said.
The nursing major said that she sold her first artwork when she was 13, but beyond that, always knew that she would never pursue it as a career.
“I prefer for it to stay a hobby,” she said. “If they pay and set up a deadline, that adds pressure and stress to the situation.”
Denise Brown said that she and her husband, Roger, “are beyond proud” of their daughter.
“I have loved displaying the pictures at the hospital over the past ten years and having some of the same people come in and see how her talents have progressed,” she said. “Some people just sit there in their chairs in absolute awe. It certainly makes a mother proud.”
