Meet The Artist: Cecily Brennan

 

This is done metaphorically, in landscape, in depictions of skin diseases and their treatment, in basic science demonstrations, and directly, through film and video work, considering grief, self-harm, melancholia and psychosis. Her practice encompasses film, photography, drawing, printmaking, painting (in gesso, oil and watercolour), casting and sound. Brennan is a member of Aosdána and is currently chairwoman of its organising committee, the Toscaireacht. She was a founder of the Artists Campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment, which was part of the successful campaign to guarantee reproductive rights to Irish women.

 

Her current show, Pressure, at the Glucksman Gallery, Cork, is a major survey exhibition of new work including the gallery premiere of the short film The Devil's Pool and photographs from her ongoing Six Men project, alongside a selection of earlier pieces that also investigate the connections between mind and body, mental and material forces.

 

The Six Man Project opens at the Taylor Galleries, Dublin on February 13. See: Glucksman.org and taylorgalleries.ie

 

How my artistic journey began I've always drawn and painted. As the youngest of six I was a bit isolated, living in my own world of imagination. When my sister Felicity went to art college, I realised that I could have a life making art.

 

Where the title for my current show came from The show at the Glucksman in Cork is a survey show looking back at about 20 years of work. Pressure is a common theme. Metaphorically, or directly, my work looks at damage we all suffer and how we recover.

 

What I want my audience to feel when viewing my work
Empathy; the recognition that few people are happy all the time. Our bones break, our

skin splits. Most people recover, but they carry scars.

 

Artists who have influenced me:
I tend to focus on certain artists or works depending on where I am with my own work. Right now I am drawing and painting in oils, so Géricault, Manet, Rubens, the Caravaggisti - and Goya of course. There are many artists who work in a form different to mine that I like, such

as performance artist Joan Jonas or Egyptian artist Wael Shawky, who works across film, sculpture, performance and drawing and who, with the extraordinary film called Drama 1882, was the representative of Egypt at the last Venice Biennale.

 

I have a collection of ... My only valuable possession is my house that I was really lucky to be able to buy in the early 1980s. I don't collect things.

 

An artist whose work I would collect if I could
I burst into tears when they brought out a drawing by Hans Holbein at the Kupferstichk-

abinett in the Kulturforum in Berlin. But maybe Suzanne Valadon, Agnes Martin or Joan

Mitchell? Fortunately, there are so many public galleries with so much wonderful work that everyone can see.

A place that means a lot to me The Appian Way in Rome, what's left of it, I tramped it
up and down.

A place I'd like to visit Kyoto, Tokyo, anywhere in Japan

In another life I would have been ... In the hope that they met in Velázquez's studio, I would have been an assistant grinding colours while he discussed with Rubens the commission by Philip IV to make paintings for the royal hunting lodge outside Madrid.

Rubens delivered 63 mythological scenes in 1638. Velázquez contributed 11 paintings of his own and oversaw the installation.

 

The best piece of advice I ever received
Just keep going.