Cecily Brown is a British artist who specializes in abstract painting. She left regular school to attend Epson Art School at 16 years old, and later received a BA in Fine Art at the Slade School of Art. Most of her art is oil paint on linen, but she does watercolor as well. The range of concepts and themes she covers is huge - if you look at her website's gallery, you can see whimsical, nature inspired paintings right next to paintings of intense gore.
I'm more drawn to her whimsical and figurative paintings. I like her piece 'Lunge', which depicts an abstract scene of a tree. There are really great colors and combinations of patterns that I'd like to see if I could make with watercolor. I especially like the swirls in the trees. I also really love, and can probably draw the most inspiration from, some of her watercolor. While her untitled piece below is more sketchy, I love the colors she used, and I always like rabbit art. I want to experiment more with letting colors flow on the paper like she does in this piece.
Lunge, oil on linen, 2003
untitled, watercolor, 1997
In a New Yorker article titled "Cecily Brown's Attempt to Make Impossible Art", the author argues that Brown's work is too busy and that she tries to add many things at once, making it difficult to process or remember. I agree that some of her paintings do feel a little overwhelming, but I also really like the contrast of different textures in some of them. They remind me of a collage. Whether or not an abstract piece of art is too busy or not busy enough is so subjective, and I think this author glosses over that a little too much.
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