What Once Was
Grace Brown
VAST Senior Exhibition
April 16–27, 2026
Sheetz Gallery
Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts
Artist Bio
Grace Brown is a visual artist who primarily works in multimedia. She combines oil pastels, watercolor, gouache, and charcoal to create her own visual language. Her artwork is rooted in elements of her personal life, nature, and the interconnectedness of things around her. She will graduate from Penn State Altoona in 2026 with a B.A. in visual art studies. She was the recipient of the college’s Zoller Art Award in 2023, the Fine Art Award in 2025, and was featured in its Hard Freight literary arts magazine and several group art exhibitions. Brown was raised in Altoona and plans to remain local while continuing to pursue a career in the arts.
Artist Statement
What Once Was is a body of work rooted in nostalgia and the longing for moments shaped by my childhood memories, relationships, and familiar places. My work reflects personal experiences of change, capturing the emotional space between comfort and loss. Through visual language, I explore matters of the human experience and the bittersweet feelings of “what once was.”
In these pieces, I construct drawings of my personal interpretations of nostalgia through the combination of oil pastels and gouache. I replicate sentimental moments in time, like my brother and me sitting in the pine tree of my childhood backyard, or my grandma and me standing in the water at Ocean City, Maryland, waiting for a wave. I communicate my feelings of nostalgia through the layering of oil pastels in a broad color palette, which results in movement, texture, and contrast in each composition. To me, the layers of media in my work relate to the layers of time, memories, and change in my life.
Most people have had similar moments that trigger feelings of nostalgia for them, whether it is a specific smell, taste, encounter, sound, and so on. I find it very intriguing that it is something that can be experienced through all five senses. For me, nostalgia is ultimately a feeling of comfort, reassurance, and simplicity. It is a warm feeling takes brings you back to your younger self, before all the change took place. My work welcomes viewers to reflect on the universal sense of longing for the past and to connect my memories with their own.
Artwork Checklist
- Norway Spruce, 2025
Oil pastels and gouache on paper, 22” x 28” - Ocean City, 2025
Oil pastels and gouache on paper, 22” x 28” - Jethro, 2025
Oil pastels and gouache on paper, 22” x 19” - Grandview Ave., 2025
Oil pastels and gouache on paper, 18” x 21.5” - Fountainhead, 2025
Oil pastels and gouache on paper, 20” x 16” - The Blue Holes, 2025
Oil pastels and gouache on paper, 20” x 16” - Bus 35, 2025
Oil pastels and gouache on paper, 18” x 22” - 53rd St., 2025
Oil pastels and gouache on paper, 16” x 19.5” - Spring Dam Park, 2025
Oil pastels and gouache on paper, 18” x 22” - 2009, 2026
Oil pastels and gouache on paper, 23.5” x 18” - 552, 2026
Oil pastels and gouache on paper, 16.5” x 16” The Back Porch, 2026
Oil pastels and gouache on paper, 16.5” x 16”