36 Years Later, Lewis Tillman Came Looking for His Painting

In 1990 I was still signing my work “Ed Brown.”

That is what sits in the lower left of this canvas — Ed Brown, 90 — on one of the first paintings I ever put a Giants uniform into. Number 34, helmet down, body leaned into the play, running to take the ball. The red, white and blue behind him is the crowd, broken into strokes; the same colors come off the jersey as speed. Lewis Tillman.

Tillman came out of Jackson State in the fourth round of the 1989 draft, 93rd overall, and spent five seasons in New York. The season I signed that canvas, the Giants won Super Bowl XXV.

Close-up of the artist signature reading Ed Brown 90 on the 1990 original painting of Lewis Tillman

The Signature I Don’t Use Anymore

I have signed my work Edgar Brown for most of my career. For a short stretch at the start, it was Ed Brown. That signature is a date stamp. You cannot fake it, you cannot reprint it, and there is exactly one canvas in the world carrying it with Lewis Tillman on the front.

That matters more now than it did then. The sports art market is filling up with digital work and AI-generated images of athletes — fast, endless, and identical. None of it begins with a person at an easel, at a specific moment in time, with that person’s name on the canvas.

The Phone Call

Earlier this year my phone rang and there were three people on the line: Lewis Tillman, his wife Kathy, and Ottis Anderson — the man named MVP of that same Super Bowl XXV.

I have painted Ottis three times. His Super Bowl XXV MVP original is still in my collection autographed Super Bowl XXV MVP. Thirty-six years after I painted his teammate, he got on a three-way call to help that teammate bring the piece home.

You do not organize a conference call over a poster.

I was glad to let it go. Some paintings should end up with the person in them, and this was one of them.

Former New York Giants running back Lewis Tillman holding his 1990 original painting by Edgar J. Brown

From a Canvas to an Heirloom

It hangs in the Tillmans’ home now. Kathy posted about it when it arrived:

“Let me take a moment to thank Edgar Brown for allowing me to acquire this painting of Lewis that was done 36 years ago! We’re so grateful.”

That is the part worth sitting with. It is not a collectible any more. It is a family heirloom — the thing that gets passed to their children with the story attached, the way a photograph or a ring does.

An AI image cannot become that. A prompt typed into a machine and printed on demand has no hand in it, no year, no signature that means anything, and nobody to telephone about it thirty-six years later.

What collectors are actually buying — and what I have watched them buy for thirty-five years — is human work. A hand-painted original, or a fine art edition made from one and signed and numbered by the artist who painted it. Both start at the same easel, with the same forty hours. Neither starts in a machine.

Lewis Tillman at home with the 1990 Edgar J. Brown original painting of him in a New York Giants uniform

That is the whole argument for painting by hand, and I did not have to make it. Three people made it for me on a conference call.

Edgar J. Brown has painted athletes since 1990, including more than 100 commissions for New York Giants players. You can see the football collection or read about commissioning an original.

36 Years Later, Lewis Tillman Came Looking for His Painting

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