Creating the Poster

Brownsville Bred writer and director Elaine Del Valle has been a fan of artist Tim Okamura since seeing his work exhibited at Art Basel. Del Valle felt a deep connection to Okamura's art, saying it stirred childhood memories and captured urban female strength.

​

The connection she felt between Okamura's aesthetic and the story that she set out to tell in Brownsville Bred, emboldened the filmmaker to reach out.

 

The artists immediately found SYNERGY, and the result is the extraordinary Brownsville Bred Poster!

​

Okamura's work investigates identity, the urban environment, metaphor and cultural iconography through painting.

 

He is a recipient of the 2004 Fellowship in Painting from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and was short-listed by the Royal Surveyor of the Queen's Picture Collection for a commissioned portrait of the Queen of England in 2006 and has been selected nine times to appear in the prestigious BP Portrait Award Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

 

Okamura's work is featured on the cover of TIME and Washington Post magazines. He was featured at the Art Director's Club in New York and had a solo show at National Arts Club alongside the works of Romare Bearden in 2014. In 2015, the White House garnered him with invitation and commendation, in honor of artists whose work addresses issues of social justice. His work was included in a traveling exhibition by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in 2016 and most recently several of Okamura's works were featured prominently in the "Still I Rise" exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in 2020.

​