[ART] A Closer Look at British Painter Cecily Brown 🎨

One of the recent more interesting acquaintances on the international art scene is British painter Cecily Brown (b. 1969). Unfortunately, she hasn't exhibited at our latitudes here in Scandinavia, so I have not had the privilege to see her art IRL, but have had to be content with books and internet sites. But as in most cases you usually get to know the works of the artists through reproductions, and you're rarely disappointed once you stand there in front of them. When it comes to Cecily Brown one is often met with a color explosive and heady style of painting.

Cecily Brown's subjects range from naked human bodies that interact sexually to landscapes and many themes in between. In Cecily Brown's work, form and subject collide and explode, yet remain distinctly recognizable. Be it due to composition, the choice of colors, size, even more or less copying - specific elements refer to everything from De Kooning, Bacon, Goya and Guston. But also to more classical painters such as Nicolas Poussin, Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas and William Hogarth. Her work is both classic and highly experimental. Even though her energized images on the border of abstraction and figuration draws a lot from other artists before her, she has developed her own very unique language. The artist's gestural style of painting is always evident.

Cecily Brown seems sure and powerful enough in her work to be able to cope with the pressure and the production demands on the modern artists, where they are forced to repeat themselves in a more and more superficial way. Cecily Brown is a truly driven painters, with a secure sense of her medium. One could say that she belongs to the tradition of abstract natural lyricism.

With obvious fascination with nature in its most culturally loaded terms, Cecily Brown sabotages any prejudice the viewer might have about beauty in relation to painting, with lust, whipping brush strokes and intense color chords. A lot of painters probably agrees with that the paint medium itself carries a sublimated form of eroticism. Cecily Brown plays masterfully on this particular string.

But she also belongs to the wave of figurative painters interested in mass culture through her underlying choice of subjects. Significant for the mass culture of the past 15-20 years is not least the dramatic increase in the availability of pornography. Cecily Brown's paintings have often been based on such pornographic images.

Currently she exhibits drawings at The Drawing Center in New York. Open until the 19th of December. Not to be missed if you're in or around the Big Apple.

—  SteemSwede