Nigel Brown was born in Invercargill in 1949, grew up in the Bay of Plenty, then lived in Auckland for several decades before moving to the remote western Southland settlement of Cosy Nook in 2001. Now, he resides in Dunedin, working in a two-level, multi-room studio in the industrial harbourside area, amongst the hubbub of machinery, trucks and a horde of hard-hatted, high-vis-vest-clad labourers. In the 1970s, factory jobs were the means by which Brown supported himself and his family, while the ‘everyman’ Kiwi labourer became a recurring figure in his art (along with more illustrious characters such as the controversial and contrasting Jameses, Cook and Baxter). One might be forgiven, too, for thinking that the surfaces of some of the paintings were achieved with a concreter’s trowel rather than…