Little is known about Edwin Brooks’ early years before he graduated from Cooper Union in 1950. After his graduation, Brooks studied at New York University in the School of Education from 1953 until 1954. In 1955, Brooks was awarded the Margaret Day Blake Fellowship based on the sketches he submitted to a jury in a national competition. The members of the jury included the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, John I. H. Baur, as well as artist Ben Shahn, and members of the faculty of the Skowhegan School. Unlike the other artists involved with the South Solon Meeting House frescoes, Edwin Brooks had no previous connections with the Skowhegan School of Art and Sculpture. After finishing the ceiling fresco, Brooks received a Fulbright Fellowship to study in Paris in 1956 and remained for an additional year funded by a Woolley Fellowship, where he worked in painting in gravure.
—Julia Lagomarsino
- Cummings, Mildred H. South Solon: The Story of A Meeting House. South Solon Historical Society, 1959.