Having moved from London to New York in the mid 1990′s, Cecily Brown has a studio in Manhattan from which she creates painterly paintings, some with elements of landscape. Much of the early work of Cecily Brown had overtly sexual imagery, but her painting in the early 21st century verges on the pastoral although she says she has an ongoing interest in the figurative.

Cecily Brown was raised in a suburb of London by her mother Shena Mackay and Robin Brown whom she thought was her father. But later she learned that her father was David Sylvester, British art historian and critic, whom her mother often took her to visit. He and Cecily Brown became close friends, and when she was 22, she learned from her mother that Sylvester was her father.

The artist attended Slade School in London and took lessons from the painter Maggi Hambling and also used his studio. Cecily Brown began her paintings with sexual themes, but felt like a misfit in London. In 1994, she moved to New York and took a job as an animator for a commercial film maker. In 1997, Cecily Brown had an exhibit of her early signature works with raucous color and copulating bunnies. From there she moved to erotic imagery with humans.

Cecily Brown is also working on monotypes and creates drawings based on Old Master paintings.

Source includes:
ARTnews, June 2002

Biography from the Archives of AskART.