Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown is an artist who wields a paintbrush with the energetic fury of a tempestuous love affair. Her canvases are a glorious mess of abstraction and figuration, where bodies and landscapes tumble together in a riot of color and sensual energy. She’s been compared to the macho Abstract Expressionists, but with a distinctly female gaze that explores sexuality with both humor and intensity. Born in London to a novelist and an art critic, she fled the trendy Young British Artists scene for the grit of New York City. Rumor has it she once paid a bar tab with a sketch on a napkin that is now worth more than the entire establishment. It's also whispered that she directs her assistants with interpretive dance, a claim as dubious as it is delightful. Brown’s work is a testament to the thrilling, messy, and often contradictory business of being human.