ABOUT

ADAM BRICUSSE

www.adambricusse.com • mail@adambricusse.com • +44 (0)7956 976750

« In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it. »

– Ernst Fischer

    Adam Bricusse was born in London on April 4th 1964 , and grew up between Britain, France and the USA. He was educated at St. Martins School of Art (Foundation) and The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Merton College, Oxford, gaining a BFA and an MA. He has been a practicing artist since then, having worked and exhibited globally. Bricusse currently works between studios in London and France.

 

    Inspired by multi-layered themes with characters and landscapes drawn from classical and natural sources … Samurais versus monsters, modern and retro, ancient and dynamic face-offs between a variety of adversaries set against backdrops of dark mysterious forests, raging seas , angry skies and various beasts….sourced from old B movies to the finest of ancient Japanese drawings and all manner of references…photographic and otherwise.

« Beauty is a primeval phenomenon, which itself never makes its appearance, but the reflection of which is visible in a thousand different utterances of the creative mind, and is as various as nature herself. »

– Johann von Goethe

Bricusse’s work is inspired by an eclectic melange of imagery and diverse cultural forces… Incorporating Lovers and Fighters, Animals, Spacemen, Ancient Warriors, Pirates and Circus Freak Show images. Nature, Combat and love are common themes, with other-worldly Beasts and Guardians confronting each other in inverted, often mimetic, symmetry… His most recurring and all-encompassing themes… The Reflection of Opposites and The Violence of Nature… and The Nature of Violence A never-ending, all encompassing face-off of all the conflicting elements of life, representing love and destruction, Nature’s nature in all its forms of violence, passion and serene tranquility.

 

More recently, reflecting towards the Future, Spacemen (modern man), ascending transcendentally , descending lost in space… Rising and falling- the ebb and flow of time and space… some of recent works reflecting in 3D, or at least what you’d see if you took off your (red and cyan) glasses at a given moment- the jarring of outlines in red and cyan- something I was obsessed with as a boy, not to see the Stereoscopic image… but rather the break down of the old-fashioned 3D effect. This covers various subjects which suit the technique.

« Louis Ducos du Hauron produced the first printed anaglyphs in 1891. This process consisted of the two negatives which form a stereoscopic photograph on to the same paper, one in blue (or cyan), one in red. The viewer would then use coloured glasses with red (for the left eye) and blue or cyan (right eye). »

« Bull terriers fly at each other amidst crashing waves, a boxer’s right hook dissolves into an idealized dream of a woman, a close-up of a pilot’s face, a flash before his destruction, the impossible monochrome silhouette of a serpent’s rib-cage… Adam’s work is diverse but never miscellaneous. The familiar becomes eccentric, the taboo is made casual. The images are sometimes mythic but projected through vivid half-memories of films and fantasies, flashes of recollection from drunken nights and sober nightmares, dreams of glorious experience, raucous humor and archetypes of child like wonder and glee. All this is the world of the Carnival where order is subverted and desire runs free and then there is the intricate beauty of a butterfly’s wing, soundless and calm, a fragile snapshot of nature precarious and utterly lovely. »

– Rowan Sommerville

   There is a voyeuristic element to Bricusse’s work, inviting the viewer to travel beyond the cracked surfaces and luscious glazes of the paintings into the allegory he wants you to see and remember. The work is steeped in metaphors of life’s extremes, allowing one to linger for a moment in their romantic and sensuous ideal… Where there is peace after madness , and the mysteries within become externalized, an invitation to enter a sublime world of fantastic reflection.

« There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. »

– Francis Bacon

  Innocence and Experience, Sex and Violence, Lovers and Fighters, Life and Death, lurk magically in these multi-layered and opulent paintings… as well as, A place in the Universe a series of works addressing the natural world, once commissioned to do a vertical section of the Amazon, in a vintage Botanical style – seen from the bottom of a river up through the jungle and out through the forest canopy into the sky, showing all the different creatures in this ascent from bottom to top – imminent extinction to most species – always making variations on this idea … from sketches to more complex vertical compositions, one is currently in progress.

      Bricusse’s work is Technically comprised of line (graphite, oil pastel and wax), airbrush (acrylic ink), oil paint, glazes (French enamel), powdered metals and a selection « ageing and cracking » varnishes, all to varying ‘alchemical’ degrees and material combinations. Some pieces are simple,  using few materials, some a symphony of many… it is the subject matter that defines the materials, form and technique.

« There is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than beauty. »

– Joseph Addison

     Having spent four years sharing a studio in East London with close friend and Artist Harland Miller…

         Extract from Harland Millers book INTERNATIONAL LONELY GUY

« I first met the painter Adam Bricusse at a time that was not a good time for painters… concept art had taken over so entirely and with such speed that I’m not sure Adam – who was one of the most immersed painters I’d met – had really noticed; Adam however was indifferent to what was going on in the art world, whilst being very knowledgeable about the artists he liked, one of whom was Gaugin intact as well as Bacon – Redon and Goya, Ernst and Nolde  – he tended not to look at contemporary art but rather at life – or more specifically nature. More specifically still it was the violence of nature that excited him as a subject… not just in art but literature and – I have to say life style. Post The Scream – or post the reams that have been written about the Scream. It is difficult to talk with any degree of originality on the subject of man battling or being overwhelmed by the forces of nature; perhaps this in turn has put future generations off even attempting the subject, the feeling being the subject was emptied out or overdone – if that was the case then Adam seemed to see it in the opposite way – conversely he recognized in the natural world an inexhaustible subject matter in which only we – human beings – identified beauty and brutality in equal measures. As far as we know a tiger does not consider himself exquisite or his kills to be horrific – these are our pre-occupations – these are certainly Adam’s pre-occupations – or at any rate they seemed that way to me though I expected i would understand a lot more about his intentions after we had spent a few months painting together in the Bayeaux – and otherwise alone, although from studying the local maps I saw that we were in the vicinity of Mississippi state penitentiary and had been advised not to pick up Hitchhikers! »

« At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise… that denseness and that strangeness of the world is absurd. »

– Albert Camus

 Having shown in many galleries over the years, currently with Serena Morton Gallery, Bricusse  is also a Commission Artist and has many small private viewings from his studio in London and in St Paul, France. His well known series of Butterfly and Scarab paintings have evolved and progressed over the years, and are currently almost exclusively done as commissioned work, to be viewed from his studio rather than through galleries…

 

Studio Appointments and viewings can be arranged from his contacts on this website…