{"id":491147,"date":"2026-03-23T16:16:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T16:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/491147\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T16:16:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T16:16:07","slug":"cecily-brown-i-was-too-shy-to-talk-to-all-these-super-cool-kids-like-sarah-lucas-and-damien-hirst-painting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/491147\/","title":{"rendered":"Cecily Brown: \u2018I was too shy to talk to all these super cool kids like Sarah Lucas and Damien Hirst\u2019 | Painting"},"content":{"rendered":"

People say that Cecily Brown left London in the early 1990s because of the YBAs \u2013 as if, she laughs, she wanted to get away from them. \u201cI actually had great admiration for the art being made, I just wasn\u2019t in sync with them.\u201d While Damien Hirst<\/a> was dunking dead animals in formaldehyde and Sarah Lucas was devouring bananas in front of the camera, Brown was wielding a palette and brush. \u201cThere was this feeling in London at the time that if you were a painter, you were a loser. I didn\u2019t feel like a saddo for being a painter in New York.\u201d<\/p>\n

You would think, then, that she\u2019d be returning triumphant. She was taken on in her 20s by mega-gallery Gagosian, and has works in MoMA and the Tate. Recent shows include a survey at the Met in New York. Her paintings, slippery and complex canvases that are richly allusive and reward slow looking, sell for millions, making her one of the most valuable living female artists.<\/p>\n

\u2018I feel I\u2019ve got to prove myself\u2019 \u2026 Cecily Brown in her studio. Photograph: Victoria Hely-Hutchinson<\/p>\n

But a few days ahead of her first big museum show back home, at London\u2019s Serpentine Gallery<\/a>, she\u2019s a bag of nerves. \u201cThe thing I\u2019m really afraid of is critics, because they\u2019ll say it\u2019s overhyped. I feel I\u2019ve got to prove myself. I want each show to improve on the last, which of course isn\u2019t going to happen \u2013 it\u2019s not linear. As I get older I\u2019m more aware because I think, God, I\u2019ve been so lucky \u2026\u201d She stops, casts around for a piece of paper and a pen, takes a breath. \u201cSometimes it\u2019s helpful to doodle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown talks how she paints: energetically, her thoughts and opinions revealing themselves before dissolving, layering like the rhythmic brushstrokes on her dense, roiling canvases. \u201cI tend to ramble,\u201d she tells me, apologetically. We\u2019re drinking tea in an upstairs meeting room at the Serpentine after looking at the exhibition being installed below, and though she\u2019s nothing but warm and friendly, I can tell she\u2019s itching to get back to it.<\/p>\n

\u2018Celebrating nature, colour and light\u2019 \u2026 Nature Walk with Paranoia by Cecily Brown. Photograph: \u00a9 Cecily Brown, 2026<\/p>\n

Picture Making brings together new and old paintings, as well as recent monotypes and drawings, all with a nod to the green and pleasant land of her youth. The meandering canvases inspired by Kensington Gardens are a riot of energy and movement. With streaks of sunshine yellow, mud brown and spring green, they seem lighter than the early works, like they\u2019ve gulped fresh air; during the painting process, she was looking at children\u2019s picture books. In signature Brown style, recognisable details emerge amid a tangle of abstract strokes before melting away: blink and you\u2019ll miss the dog, tree, bird box. \u201cIt\u2019s celebrating nature, colour and light,\u201d she tells me, \u201cbut at the same time, inevitably, there\u2019s instability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now 56, Brown was born in London, before moving with her family to Surrey when she was a toddler. \u201cIt was idyllic,\u201d she says. \u201cWe walked to school, there was a village green, it was chocolate boxy \u2013 at least on the surface.\u201d Her mother is the novelist Shena Mackay<\/a>. Aged 21, Brown learned that her father wasn\u2019t the man who raised her, but the influential art critic and curator David Sylvester. A family friend, he\u2019d been taking her to exhibitions since she was a teenager, and introducing her to artists including Francis Bacon. He encouraged her ambitions. In 1989 she enrolled at the Slade School of Art.<\/p>\n

\u2018When I started looking at art seriously, looking just wasn\u2019t enough\u2019 \u2026 Untitled (Boating) by Cecily Brown. Photograph: \u00a9 Cecily Brown, 2026.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tempting to say that it was the Sylvester-shaped connection to great artists that gave Brown the confidence to borrow from them. Throughout her career, she\u2019s pilfered colours and details from paintings of the past (as well as books and television), breaking them down and making them new again. I tell her it was a bold thing for a young woman to do, lifting fragments from famous art by famous men. \u201cYeah, I know,\u201d she replies, with a girlish grin. Did it feel bold at the time? \u201cNot at all. When I started looking at art seriously, looking just wasn\u2019t enough. I wanted to copy it as a way of understanding it.\u201d She pauses. \u201cPlus, there was this sense that it was all there to be stolen, I might as well use it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She moved to New York in 1994, a year after graduating. Back home, everyone was talking about the death of painting; across the pond, people had moved on. \u201cThere were so many more galleries that I felt I could fit in somewhere. In London, I was never going to be a part of it.\u201d But there was more to the move than the fuss over the YBAs. \u201cI had a confidence in New York that I didn\u2019t have at home. I felt oppressed by the class system here. You know that line in My Fair Lady, about it being impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him? Back then, I either felt too posh or not posh enough for every situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Was she also conscious, because of who her father turned out to be, that she didn\u2019t want to be seen as a \u2026 \u201cnepo baby, 100%. If I was with my dad, I could hang out with Nick Serota or Howard Hodgkin. But if I went to an opening, I was too shy to talk to all these super cool kids like Sarah and Damien.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Sometimes I think people have forgotten what art is\u2019 \u2026 Study for Sarn Mere 3 by Cecily Brown. Photograph: \u00a9 Cecily Brown, 2026<\/p>\n

Despite the warm welcome in New York, when she arrived she tried to shrug off her identity as a painter, dabbling in video, photo-based stuff, \u201cterrible assemblages\u201d. Like most young people, she says, she wanted to do something new. \u201cI think one reason a lot of people don\u2019t end up making art once they leave art school is because of the realisation that you can\u2019t. You just can\u2019t. I mean, maybe 1% of artists every 10 years do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within a few years, she\u2019d picked up her paintbrush again, first finding recognition with pictures of hedonistic bunnies emerging from whorls of colour. Orgiastic images of a more human nature followed, along with classical themes such as still lifes and shipwrecks. In the early 2000s, she introduced the English landscape into her work, and the natural world has remained a focus ever since.<\/p>\n

\u2018When the weather\u2019s nice I want to move here immediately\u2019 \u2026 Couple by Cecily Brown. Photograph: \u00a9 Cecily Brown, 2026<\/p>\n

I ask if she still has fond feelings for the New York art world. \u201cOh my God, if you get me started on the art world \u2026 It\u2019s so hard to talk about as someone who\u2019s benefited from the ridiculousness, but I think greed has overtaken creativity. There will always be real artists, but what we\u2019ve got at the moment is a very commercial art world where a lot of artists are making work directly for the market. Sometimes I think people have forgotten what art is.\u201d She winces. \u201cI\u2019m imagining the comments: Oh, shut up, you\u2019re so spoiled in your cashmere sweater while you tell people not to \u2026\u201d She doodles.<\/p>\n

Since moving to the US aged 25, the longest time she\u2019s spent outside Manhattan was the six months she and her husband and their daughter lived in Hudson Valley during the pandemic. Would she ever move back to London? \u201cI have a fleshed-out fantasy of living in England. When the weather\u2019s nice I want to move here immediately. But when it\u2019s not \u2026 I spent too many hours standing at bus stops in the rain in my youth to ever do that again. But I\u2019ve never lived here solvent. And obviously that makes a huge difference, if you can jump in a cab.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the London art scene, does she feel a part of it now? \u201cWell, the art world has become so much about money. My paintings are expensive, so \u2026\u201d She smiles. \u201cI don\u2019t feel shy walking into an opening any more, put it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People say that Cecily Brown left London in the early 1990s because of the YBAs \u2013 as if,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-491147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}