21 Facts About Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown was born on 1969 and is a British painter.

Cecily Brown is married to architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff; they have one daughter.

Since 2014, Cecily Brown has been serving on the board of directors of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.

Cecily Brown earned a B-TEC Diploma in Art and Design from the Epsom School of Art, Surrey, England, took drawing and printmaking classes at Morley College, London, and received a BA degree in Fine Arts from the Slade School of Art, London.

Cecily Brown worked as a waitress and, later, in an animation studio.

Cecily Brown earned First Class Honours at the Slade and was the first-prize recipient in the National Competition for British Art Students.

Cecily Brown graduated from the Slade and started exhibiting around the same time as the Young British Artists.

Cecily Brown left London for New York City in 1994, inspired by her time studying there in university.

Cecily Brown maintained a studio in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan, then in 2011, she worked from a studio at a former office near Union Square.

Cecily Brown began exhibiting as a painter in the 1990s, at a time where painting had been uncommon in the art world in favor of multimedia, sculptural, and conceptual performance art.

Cecily Brown uses drawing as a prerequisite to guide her work.

Cecily Brown's paintings combine figuration and utter abstraction while exploring the power relationship between male and female.

The main characteristic of Cecily Brown's paintings is her use of motion, expressive mark-making and many mixtures of color throughout her pieces.

Cecily Brown's paintings recall the works of Philip Guston and the Bay Area Figurative School of the 1950s and 1960s.

Cecily Brown has been grouped with leading female contemporary painters, including Charline von Heyl, Jacqueline Humphries, Laura Owens, Jutta Koether, Amy Sillman, and Emily Sundblad.

Cecily Brown often spends multiple days on works, and will work on up to 20 works at a time, allowing layers of paint to dry between applications.

Cecily Brown presided in 2004, along with other artists such as Laura Owens and Elizabeth Peyton, over a Democratic Party fund-raising event, Art Works for Hard Money, in Los Angeles.

In 2020 Cecily Brown donated her work Wanton Boy to amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, to help fund their temporary COVID-19 research initiative.

Cecily Brown has received a lot of critical attention for powerful, athletically sized canvases and bold brushwork.

Cecily Brown has staged many solo shows and exhibitions in the United States, United Kingdom, and internationally.

Cecily Brown has participated in many group exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial.