Lot 30 - Darcy Brenna - The Kissed

Acrylic and pigment on paper
2025
A6 (10x15cm)
Original Artwork
Signed on Verso
Curated by Mercedes Lucy

About
Darcy Brenna (b.1998) is a recent graduate of the Tracey Emin Artist Residency following studies at UCA. Darcy has recently shown works in LA with MEY gallery at Maison Lune, in London with Liliya Gallery and Margate at TKE studios. She paints rapidly with an urgent energy, through abstracted forms and the need to portray how it feels to live inside a woman’s body, a human body, and to understand the complexity of what it feels like to be alive. In her work, bodies contort or shift space within her intuitive and gestural brushwork. She paints fluidly and instinctively, allowing her unconscious mind to step forward, thus never planning or creating preparatory drawings. Enamoured by Margate’s stormy waves, her recent body of work mimics the sea, botany bay, chalky stacks, caves that imitate graves, birds, and carcasses which build up through multiple layers of brushstrokes to one mass of intensity. Her work mirrors her deep yearning for understanding various stages of life from death to birth and rebirth. In ‘maiden mother crone and bloom’ Darcy excavates an internal guttural layering. Utilising pentimento, she paints and repaints, covers up and destroys, evoking a push and pull, holding hands with calm and chaos.