Selected work
BUTTERFLIES
Selected work
BLUE SCARAB
Selected work
PINK SCARAB
Selected work
TURQUISE BUTTERFLY
Selected work
RED SCARAB
Selected work
YELLOW SCARAB
Selected work
Butterflies paintings at the gallery

 

ADAM BRICUSSE / BIOGRAPHY

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 drawn from classical and contemporary culture… 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…

Bricusse’s work is inspired by an eclectic melange of imagery and diverse cultural forces… Incorporating Lovers and Fighters, Animals, Ancient Warriors, Pirates, Gypsies and Circus Freak Show images. 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”… A never-ending face-off of all the conflicting elements of life, representing love and destruction, violence and passion.

  “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 Summerville

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.

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Innocence and Experience, Sex and Violence , Lovers and Fighters , Life and Death,

lurk magically in these multi-layered and opulent paintings……Technically they are comprised of line (graphite and aquarelle pencil) , airbrush (acrylic ink) , oil paint , glazes (French enamel) , powdered metals and a selection of repelling “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 form .

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 ! ”

Having shown in many galleries over the years, Bricusse is also a Commission Artist and has many small private viewings from his studio in London . His well known series of Butterfly and Scarab paintings have evolved and progressed over the years, and are nowadays 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 his website…

Peculiar, yet playful and sometimes sinister, his paintings are glimpses into the psyche and life of the Artist …… a sensuous diary of appetites, arresting and unsqueamish. His work is an adult candy store full of nutrition for the imagination.

” Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world. ” Goethe

 

 

ADAM BRICUSSE

WWW.ADAMBRICUSSE.COM MAIL@ADAMBRICUSSE.COM +44 (0)7956 976750

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The exhibition list 

May 2016
‘Sacred’

The Cat Street Gallery, Hong Kong
November 2014
‘Kaleido’
Lights of Soho, London
July 2012
‘Quantum Jumping’
Cock’n’Bull, London
April 2011
Sideshow
The Outsiders, London
July 2008
‘Desert Dreamings’
Cat Street Gallery, Hong Kong
October 2007
Primal

Cat Street Gallery, Hong Kong
March 2007

‘TOO FAST TO LIVE TOO YOUNG TO DIE’

Frank Pictures Gallery
September 2006
‘The Mysteries Within’
Charing X Gallery, London
*Spring 2004
The Blue Gallery, London

September 2001
‘Touchie Feelie ‘
Blue Gallery, London
April 2000
‘Blaines Fine Art, London
January 2000
‘So Far So Good ‘
Babington House, Somerset
April 1999
‘Blink‘

The Gallery in Cork Street, London

1998
‘Koi‘

Babington House, Somerset

1998
‘Fresh‘

The Orangery, Holland Park & Coskun & Co., Walton Street, London

1996
‘Once Were Fish‘
Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London

1995

‘Oceanographic Studies ‘
Gallery Galleria Pal Kepenyes, Mexico

1994
‘Solar Nebulae Part II‘
Fly Gallery, Venice, California

1993
‘Solar Nebulae Part I‘
Alley Art Centre, Houston, Texas

1992
‘Music’

Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London

1992

‘The Violence of Nature‘
Fly Gallery, London

 

ADAM BRICUSSE – BUTTERFL Y MANIFESTO

“Our hours in Love have Wings….”

There is a reason I have been painting Butterflies a long time; once when I was in my early 20’s I had a very specific dream which always stayed with me and I believe was the root cause as to why I started doing these paintings in the first place. And also why I’ve done them always as diptychs specifically….
In my dream, I was falling to the ground at great speed, as the ground approached I opened my arms as if to embrace my impending impact, as I did so I swooped out of danger and found myself flying with a canvas on each arm…. when I gently landed much to my amazement I saw there was a Butterfly wing on each canvas! Shortly after this dream I always made two identical sized stretchers before beginning the mirror like wings , identical reflections of each other , the “body” was never necessary, it was me . Or from the viewers point of view, themselves, or whatever their imagination wanted the space between to be .

“A power of Butterfly must be – The Aptitude to fly Meadows of Majesty concedes And easy Sweeps of Sky….“

Emily Dickinson

For me, a Butterfly represents the power of the air, the ability to float upon the breeze. It’s ever changing flight patterns reflecting the nature of the mind…. in other words …. Freedom to flutter where it wants.

“When the Butterfly takes Wing, There is nothing left of the Caterpillar…”

Also reflecting the never-ending cycle of life and transformation from one entity to another; teaching us about the clarity of mind and how this can evolve within our own personal transformation during the course of our own development.

“I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days – three such days with you

I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”

-John Keats

The way Butterflies flitter and Dance among the Flowers awakens our own sense lightness and joy… two of the most intense creations on this planet. One would not survive without the other, the flower and the Butterfly.

“Butterflies are self propelled flowers.”

Robert A. Heinlein

Of course the intense range of colours in Flowers and also
Butterflies inspires change and encourages the delight in the reflection of the joy of vision itself… its beauty is a symbol of the soul, conjugal bliss even. The perfect marriage.

“Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. “
-Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Equally a Butterfly represents resurrection and a microcosm of life in itself… complete self belief and the compression of time into a complete but very brief life. Perfect in its own time .

“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”

-Rabindranath Tagore

This ethereal creature represents so many meaningful aspects of life to humanity from endurance to change, hope, transformation, resurrection and ultimately the human soul and spirit . It’s evolvement and competition.
It will always be a tireless inspiration to me….

“A flower knows, when its butterfly will return, and if the moon walks out, the sky will understand; but now it hurts, to watch you leave so soon, when I don’t know, if you will ever come back.” -Sanober Khan

 

ADAM BRICUSSE’S COLLECTORS

• Charles Saatchi
• Michael Caine
• Roger Moore
• Noel Gallagher
• Roger Federer
• Liza Minnelli
• Jackie Collins
• Claudia Schiffer
• Caroline St George
• Robert Hanson
• Marilyn Heston
• Dimitri Goulandris
• Moon Askari