Cecily Brown
British,
b. 1969
Cecily Brown is a contemporary British painter. Exploring sexual imagery and an Abstract Expressionist gestural style, Brown’s work has emerged some of the most influential of her generation. Her large-scale canvases often feature figures engaging in sexual acts under a veil of color, as seen in Sweetie (2001), which shows a semi-abstracted couple captured mid-coitus and rendered in bright pinks and purples. Brown was born in London, England in 1969 and studied at the Slade School of Art, becoming influenced by the work of early Abstract Expressionists such as Willem de Kooning and Joan Mitchell. Distancing herself from the emerging Young British Artist scene, Brown moved to New York, NY in 1994 where she quickly gained attention for her paintings.