Reynold Brown (October 18, 1917 – August 24, 1991) was a California representational artist renowned for painting many Hollywood film posters. He was also briefly active as a comics artist in his youth. He refined his native talents under Lester Bonar, art teacher at Alhambra High School. He introduced Brown to cartoonist Hal Forrest who hired him to ink (uncredited) the Tailspin Tommy strip around 1936-37. Norman Rockwell's sister was another teacher who recognized his talent and introduced them. Brown later did background work for Rockwell who advised him to leave cartooning if he wanted to be an illustrator. Brown subsequently won a scholarship to the Otis Art Institute.

During World War II Brown worked as a technical artist at North American Aviation where he devised the first “cut-away” illustrations of WWII fighter planes. There he met his wife, fellow artist Mary Louise Tejeda who encouraged him to go to New York to start a free-lance career following the war. In New York Brown illustrated numerous stories and advertisements for magazines such as Argosy, Popular Science, Saturday Evening Post, Boys' Life, Outdoor Life, and Popular Aviation as well as covers for the fledgling paperback book industry.

In 1950 they moved their growing family back to California where Brown taught at the Art Center College of Design. There he met Misha Kallis, influential art director at Universal Pictures. Through Kallis, Brown began his film poster work, which he produced for the next 20 years working for MGM, Universal Picture, Disney, Warner Bros., AIP, and others until quitting to pursue straight fine art painting in 1970.

Brown’s Western genre paintings became highly collectible in the early 70’s, from action dramas to intimate portraits. He unfortunately suffered a debilitating right-brain stroke in 1976 paralyzing his left, drawing, side. With his wife’s support, he re-trained himself to draw and paint with his right side. They moved to Western Nebraska where he concentrated on his beloved landscapes until he died in 1991.

In 1992, Nebraska documentary filmmaker, Mel Bucklin, released her feature-length film “The Man Who Drew Bug-eyed Monsters”. In 1997, the American Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (Oscars.org) honored Brown with a one-man showing of the full breadth of his film work under the same title.

Brown was a master visual storyteller, intrigued by action, faces, and the stories that shaped them. A shy man, he sketched faces wherever he traveled, often giving them to subjects as though once he had drawn them they were permanently recorded and he had no further need of the record. He was an idealist and romantic who loved heroes and the heroic epic. He depicted action bursting out of standard rectangular confines coming at the audience cinematically, anticipating the modern CGI action films. He imbued even monsters with soul.

He walked away from Hollywood at a time when it began to celebrate only the anti-hero. A pragmatist, he had taken on illustration assignments to feed his family of 8. When he could no longer rationalize the subject matter he was asked to promote, he heroically walked away from his source of income. He found a new home in the Western genre where he was rewarded as a representational painter telling human stories in a time of abstract expressionism and artistic angst. He painted to the end of his life, finding beauty in the natural world and infusing it into his canvases.