Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown creates paintings that seem to be in constant motion, pulsating with the energy of her expressive brushwork and vibrant hues, moving seamlessly between abstract and figurative styles.

Biography of Cecily Brown

Raised in suburban Surrey, England, Cecily Brown apprenticed under painter Maggi Hambling before pursuing further education at an art college. After graduating from the Slade School of Fine Art in the early 1990s, she emerged during the ascent of the Young British Artists movement. However, her artistic vision differed from their conceptual focus, ironic stance, and fascination with celebrity culture.

Following a six-month stint as an exchange student in New York in 1992, she permanently relocated there in 1994. Alongside contemporaries such as John Currin, Brown played a pivotal role in revitalizing figurative painting, infusing it with renewed vitality and critical significance.

Central to Brown’s artistic success is her remarkable skill in seemingly transmuting paint into flesh, seamlessly integrating the human figure into a frenetic, fragmented exploration of desire, life, and death. Her initial significant body of work, emerging in the mid-1990s, juxtaposes hedonistic rabbits with nods to the still-life tradition, eventually evolving into the orgiastic scenes that would solidify her widespread and enduring acclaim.

Over the past two decades, Brown’s artistic journey has unfolded gradually, marked by an expansion in scale, a diversification of allusion and palette, and an integration of landscape elements. At times, she initiates new paintings through improvisation, allowing unplanned initial brushstrokes to guide the subsequent direction of the work.

On other occasions, she draws inspiration from various sources, including art history, popular culture, or their intersection. Within her studio, Brown maintains multiple canvases in progress simultaneously, seamlessly transitioning between them to organically incorporate motifs from one into another. 

Brown has been featured in solo exhibitions at prestigious institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. 

In January 2020, she received an invitation to exhibit at Blenheim Palace, the historic eighteenth-century residence of the Spencer-Churchill family in Oxfordshire, England, where she presented a series of paintings exploring the theme of "a nation in turmoil."