painter and printmaker, was born in San Francisco (USA), a fifth-generation Australian who came to Sydney as a young child with her parents. She went to school at Ascham in Sydney and at Westonbirt, England. Her mother, Ailsa Lee Brown , was an artist, and Mitty also studied art: at East Sydney Technical College under Frank Medworth and William Dobell in 1944-46. While still a student, she took up residence at Merioola in Woollahra, a boarding house run by Chica Lowe who actively sought tenants with an interest in all fields of artistic expression. In 1944 Mitty Lee Brown was runner-up to Anne Wienholt , another Merioola resident, for the NSW Travelling Art Scholarship. In 1945 three pages of Present Day Art in Australia were devoted to her work; the paintings reproduced included a self-portrait, Sulky Girl .

Mitty Lee Brown left Australia with Wienholt in 1945, travelled extensively and did not return to Sydney until 1962, then but briefly. This inveterate traveller has lived in Paris and near Bordeaux in France, in Rome and, briefly, in Tokyo. She has built a house in Bali near Donald Friend’s longtime residence, lived on a houseboat in Kashmir, India, and renovated a house on the Greek Island of Cos. She has also undertaken two overland journeys from Europe to Australia via Turkey, Afghanistan and India. Since 1980, as Mrs Risi, she has been living and working near Trincomalee, Sri Lanka, continuing her regular visits to Australia.

Writers:

Simmons, Paul

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2011