William Brown came of age during the heyday of the American Abstract Expressionists, Rothko, Rauschenberg, Kline and Pollack to name a few. These painters believed that the medium and the activity was more important than the outcome. They greatly influenced him in his approach to painting. Brown earned a Master's Degree in Ceramics.  The connection between forms, shapes, and surfaces carried over into his painting.  His earliest paintings were in oil, but he changed to acrylic and added a collage element, pasting and building up textures.  Even on his clay pieces, he liked adding surface elements.  Fifty years later, his landscape paintings are diverse but almost always have rhythmic textural repetition, not unlike the syncopated rhythm of music.  Unlike the earlier abstract expressionists, the colors in his paintings are subtle, and flow easily into each other.