Muralist Nette Browne
“It made me so happy I wanted to paint forever.”
Nette Browne with her mural at Fine Grind in The Amelia Scott.
Nette Browne is an artist who has lived in Langton Green since 2013. I meet her in the Fine Grind café in The Amelia Scott building beneath her rich-toned mural of a coffee plantation. I am surprised when Nette tells me that the cafe used to be two nondescript classrooms in the Adult Education Centre. We both took different courses in one of these rooms at pivotal times in our life, and it feels symbolic that we are able to meet in a totally transformed space, to talk about the flourishing of Nette’s eclectic career while looking at her art.
“It made me so happy, I wanted to paint forever,” Nette says of the mural, which wraps around two sides of a wall. What was the inspiration behind it? “When I was commissioned by James and Matt, they asked me to capture their travels around the world tasting coffee,” she says. “They sent me pictures of the Columbian coffee plantations and asked me to feature the coffee plant and nature, the plantation, and the workers. I’m lucky it is such a beautiful plant, the blossom is white with gold flakes almost, and the beans have this wonderful richness.”
Nette is full of praise for the founders of Fine Grind. “Brothers Matt and James are very humble and their whole ethos is community based, supporting local businesses. They have faced hurdles with integrity and resilience, and they lift others with them. I feel like they have catapulted my career by giving me this commission – I did their menu as well, and a mural for the Zero Waste Company and I’m in talks about further projects in other venues.”
Life is busy for Nette, who did an art degree in London but has been painting since she was a child. “Dad taught me how to paint, draw and fish. From the age of five or six, I’d sit in the bay window of our house and paint what I saw.” As well as art commissions, she also has a crystal business, works as a tattoo artist and contributes significantly to Strong Female Lead events with founder Danijela Colic. It wasn’t always this way. “I hid away with my three children for a long time,” she says. Her son is disabled and needed seven surgeries in the first two years of his life. His sister was born thirteen months after him, so life was intense. “I came from London to Langton for the blue skies and the green grass – space, clean air, a place to raise my children at a slower pace.” Something shifted during the Covid-19 lockdowns when people started to look to their local communities more. “My crystals are a personal passion that turned into a business during lockdown. We were all in a struggle together and we realised what we needed to survive,” she reflects. “Maybe we are only just starting to realise the full potential of creativity there might be in Langton Green and Tunbridge Wells.”
One thing I learn quickly about Nette is that when I ask her a question about herself, she will start telling me about how wonderful someone else is with an articulate sincerity that is hard to resist. This is true when she speaks about Strong Female Lead, a community project founded by her friend Danijela. “It’s Dani’s vision, and she is just getting warmed up. She wants to create a foundation where everyone can thrive in life and in business. The idea is that we inspire women so they can have a business that serves the community and pays their bills. I bring in some of the guest speakers at our events, and I have really been looking to have multicultural speakers. I think Tunbridge Wells is more diverse than it looks at times, and Strong Female Lead is always about putting women together, so that they can make connections – a lot of these women end up working together.”
“I like variety in life,” Nette reflects on her work. “Being a mum can be very much about routine, you must be very dependable. Doing different things for my work satisfies a part of me that wants to be wild and rebellious. It’s also great because as a single mum, I have a different business for each season. I need steady income all year round because it’s just me.”
Nette’s success seems to have brought her a serene energy that is part of her journey and well deserved. “I’m in an exciting place right now,” she says. “I’m a small-town artist, and it brings me such joy to come and sit in a beautiful place like this and see people moving around my painting. I feel a part of the place, it’s a long-term reward.”
You can follow Nette on Instagram at @missbrownesugar
The other side of the mural shows the plantation workers and the flower of the coffee plant.
Interview by Jayne Sharratt
