The unsinkable Joan Brown comes to San Jose

The much-admired Bay Area artist Joan Brown didn't want to be marginalized as a female painter or condescended to as "good for a girl." "It's such bullshit," she once said. "You couldn't tell my paintings from any of the guys' of my generation, except that in some cases mine were better."

During a 35-year career, Brown, who achieved success just prior to the explosion of 1960s feminism, bucked societal trends despite pressure to adhere and espouse the ideological line, and remained apolitical. She chose instead to concentrate on the domestic sphere, autobiographical realms such as personal relationships, and introspective issues like aging, spiritualism, identity and motherhood.

Though some of these concerns were shared by the burgeoning feminist movement, the iconoclastic Brown was independent-minded and went her own way. She feared that aligning herself with the movement would have had the effect of trivializing her art and shifting an unwanted focus to her politics. But that stance cost her: a trailblazer, not a true believer, she has since been excluded from the ranks of feminist art shows.

In a 1982 interview, she declared her anthem: "I'm not any one thing: I'm not just a teacher, I'm not just a mother, I'm not just a painter, I'm all of these things, plus." Brown would die eight years later in a freak accident when a slab of concrete fell on her while she was installing an obelisk to honor her guru in India.

Although she may have transcended gender, Brown is still largely regarded as a regional artist. This Kind of Bird Flies Backward: Paintings by Joan Brown, an exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Art, argues for her right to national prominence, and examines her work in the context of the women's movement.

The show, whose title is drawn from a 1958 book of the same name by beat poet Diane di Prima, who was also a female anomaly in a male-dominated arena, includes nearly 50 paintings, mixed-media pieces and drawings dating from 1959-84, and reflects Brown's experimentation with a variety of styles and free-spirited investigations of abstract expressionism, assemblage and Bay Area figuration. She was influenced by California luminaries like her teachers Elmer Bischoff and Frank Lobdell, as well as fellow artists Richard Diebenkorn and Nathan Oliveira.

But it was the events of everyday life, intimate moments with her son, husbands and lovers, and later, her voyage of self-discovery that arrested her artistic attention. The abstract work, with its gestural brushstrokes, thick layering-on of scrumptious paint, tactile textures, complex compositions and emotional resonance, brought her early success - she had her first New York show at 22 - and it's the most compelling work on display, along with the 1970s paintings shouting their bold colors and wielding intricate patterns.

In the exhibition's first section, Personal Stories, which on its own is worth the drive to San Jose, each canvas is more exciting than the next and wonderful in its own special way. The crimson and orange animal shapes of "Untitled (Bob with Horses)" (ca. 1960) fold into each other like origami, and the vivid colors contrast with an earthy, ochre background. "Girl with Red Background (Self-Portrait)" (ca. 1959) is an image of a seated youth in profile that emanates childhood mysteries. "Noel's First Christmas" (1963), a portrait of Brown's son at a party that's a whirl of festive energy chock-full of color and distinct shapes, marked a pivot point after which the artist turned toward a flat decorative style and self-portraiture.

Her collages like "Self-Portrait with Cloud & Cigarette" (1964), a large, mixed-media piece of the artist on a cigarette break, her head encircled by fumes, and "Smoker" (1973), a thin cardboard sculpture of a painted woman's head in profile with a corkscrew wire coming out of her mouth suggesting a recently exhaled puff of pleasure, betray a self-deprecating sense of humor also found in the can't-live-with-em, can't-live-without-em, battle of the sexes section, which seems to chronicle the misadventures of a woman trying hard not to be single and failing. In "Twenty to Nine aka 20 to 9" (1972), a female figure sits alone at a table accompanied only by two glasses of wine: one empty, the other full. Has she been stood up? Is she waiting to go to work, sulking, or all of the above?

The Seduction, a series of works on paper from the mid-1970s, evokes the follies of courtship with a rueful, bitter edge, and the desolation of "The End of the Affair" (1977), an expression of a state many have had the misfortune to visit, is given an unspoken emotional dimension. Here, a man with his back to us gets dressed in shadow in front of a mirror, while seated on the bed, a woman, cut off from him by mood and color contrast, is flooded in a warm orange light, contemplating the impending separation. Is there trouble ahead, or does a world of possibility await her?

Through March 11, 2012, at the San Jose Museum of Art. www.sjmusart.org