Emily Brown's early traditional plein air paintings include a broad range of country and city landscapes, studies of the sky, the ground, water, and vegetation including compost. Her interest in materials led to an expanded practice in the studio, with ink wash on paper, collage and various other media.  

Awards include a Purchase Award from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Fellowship in the Arts from the Pew Foundation, several grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, an Independence Foundation grant, a fellowship with the Leeway Foundation, and a grant from Philagrafika.  Residencies include MacDowell, The Ballenglen Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, the LaNapoule Foundation, Wheaton Arts Glass Foundation, Wave Hill, and Artists for Environment Foundation near the Delaware Water Gap. 

Her work is included in the collections of Alliance Capital, Tokyo, Japan; Bowdoin College Art Museum; The Bryn Mawr College Library; the Farnsworth Art Museum; The Free Library of Philadelphia; MacDowell; The James A. Michener Art Museum;  Museum of American Glass; Johns Hopkins University Hospital; MacDowell;  The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; The Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Portland (Maine) Museum of Art; Princeton University Art Museum; Rutgers Center for Innovative Prints and Paper; The Shipley School; and the United States Embassy in Estana, Kajakhstan. 

Emily (Scott) Brown was raised in rural Pennsylvania. She and her husband, photographer Will Brown, became attached to Waldo County, Maine in 1966. They spent summers there for over 50 years, while living and working in Philadelphia in winters. In 2019 they moved to Garrison, NY to live near their daughter and her family. They sold their Maine property in 2023. 

She is represented in the Philadelphia area by Avery Galleries.