I LOVE YOU NIGHT AND DAY

This new entry in the “I love you SO VERY MUCH” genre offers grandiose rhyme paired to images of a small blue bunny and a slightly larger purple bear.

Broadening the potential audience if nothing else, the two figures are both androgynous and cast in an ambiguous relationship. Whether sibs, parent and child (perhaps adoptive), bosom buddies or outright lovers, in Brown’s spacious, idyllic pastel paintings, they pose together in a variety of seasons and settings, sometimes holding paws, more often sharing smiles and glances. Whether soaring in a hot air balloon, climbing a mountain or snuggling together with a book in bed, the sentiment never varies—even during a temporary ruction caused by broken crockery. The verse, spread out to a line or a couplet per spread, is as oblique as the relationship: “I love you most, I love you best, / Much, much more than all the rest. // I love you tall, I love you high, / Way up in the sunny sky.” Unsurprisingly, it’s even unclear which of the two is delivering the declarations.

A generic addition to a thoroughly overcrowded bandwagon.