Christian Zürn
Cecily Brown
PainterKnown for:
large-scale figurative-abstract painting drawing on Old Masters
Education:
Morley College, London; Slade School of Fine Art, UCL
Cecily Brown studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London before moving to New York in 1994, where her large-scale paintings - in which figurative imagery (often erotic, often derived from art history) is dissolved into gestural abstraction - attracted immediate commercial and critical attention. She draws on Old Masters, particularly Rubens, and Abstract Expressionism simultaneously, producing a practice located at the productive tension between the two traditions. She now lives between New York and Oxfordshire.
Cecily Brown's Gear List(1)
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Connection note
Oil paint is Brown's "desert island medium." She strongly advises against Winton (W&N student grade), calling it "waxy and awful." Most works are oil on linen; some are oil on aluminum. Specific preferred brand not publicly documented.
Product description
Oil paint — pigment suspended in a drying oil, typically linseed — has been the dominant painting medium since the fifteenth century. It dries slowly, allowing extended blending, and produces a rich, luminous surface. Available from dozens of manufacturers at student through professional grades.
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Last updated March 20, 2026
