Patricia Sells Brown, 56, died on September 29, 2026, after living with lung cancer. An artist and lifelong creator, a devoted mother, sister and friend, Patricia had a quiet nature, a dry sense of humor and a creative spirit that remained part of who she was throughout her life.

Patricia or P.D. was born July 11, 1970, in Belleville, New Jersey, to Grace Jones Sells and Wilburn Arthur Sells. She moved with her family to Warren, New Jersey, when she was in second grade and graduated from Watchung Hills Regional High School in 1988. While in high school, she appeared in a production of Oliver! She went on to study art at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Brunswick.

Art and creativity were constants in Patricia’s life. As a young woman she painted, but her creativity took many forms over the years—including, memorably, a vest transformed into a sculpture with safety pins. She made decorated boxes and crosses that she sold at craft fairs and was rarely without some kind of art or craft project underway. For much of her working life, she was a custom framer at retail craft stores, helping other people display and preserve the things that mattered to them. Most recently, she worked as a cashier at Michaels in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. Her craft supplies were plentiful enough that Patricia spent years driving pickup trucks before her sister finally convinced her that an SUV might be a better solution.

After college, Patricia lived for many years in Allentown, Pennsylvania, before returning to the Trenton and Lawrenceville area around 2013. She was briefly married to Willie Brown.

The greatest joy of Patricia’s later years was sharing her life with her daughter, Mattea Grace Sells. Beginning in 2019, Patricia and Mattea lived together in Lawrenceville. Their relationship did not follow a conventional path; they found one another in a new way as adults and developed a relationship that was as much friendship and companionship as it was mother and daughter. Patricia loved cooking for Mattea, spending money on her and, especially, treating her to McDonald’s breakfast. Mattea was the light of Patricia’s life, and living together brought Patricia a happiness her family was not sure she ever expected to have.

Patricia was quiet, but she was funny—often with a perfectly dry observation that simply stated the obvious in a way that somehow made it hilarious. She loved Stevie Wonder and Bob Marley, her cats Liberty and Freedom, and later Sid and Clyde. She could happily settle in with her tablet and an episode of Law & Order: SVU. During the last several months of her life at Complete Care at Park Place in Monmouth Junction, there was also the weekly snack order: plenty of Diet Pepsi.

Patricia maintained friendships across decades and distance. Friends from grade school and college remained part of her life many years later, including friendships that stretched from New Jersey all the way to California. Those enduring relationships were characteristic of someone who may have been quiet, but who formed connections that lasted.

Her sister, Kristie, remembers a childhood filled with family experiences both large and small: going to track meets where their father was an official and the girls were enlisted to run times and hold the finish-line tape; a family trip to Washington, D.C., when toddler Patricia attempted to flush her shoe down the toilet; discovering together during a family reunion in Hawaii how much they loved swimming in the ocean; and a family trip to Europe where, improbably, their favorite place to eat in London was a Chinese restaurant.

Patricia was predeceased by her parents, Grace Jones Sells in 2012 and Wilburn Arthur Sells in 2019. She is survived by her beloved daughter, Mattea Grace Sells; her sister, Kristie Elizabeth Sells; longtime friends whose relationships with Patricia spanned much of her life; and a large extended family, including generations of relatives both living and remembered.

Patricia’s life was not always an easy or conventional one. But it was unmistakably hers: filled with art and craft supplies, cats and music, old friends, dry humor, Diet Pepsi, and, in the years that meant so much to her, the simple pleasure of sharing everyday life with Mattea.

A viewing will be held at Kimble Funeral Home, 1 Hamilton Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, on Saturday, October 10, 2026, from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m followed by a funeral service at 1PM then burial in Rocky Hill Cemetery, Rocky Hill, NJ. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made in Patricia’s memory to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).