Cecily Brennan is an unlikely artist for the Taylor Gallery - judging by her recent work anyway. I remember commenting about this to Pat Taylor during her last show which featured scarred wrists and ecszema. His response was that when they took her on first she painted flowers. The inference being that they were taking the commercial hit based on the historical good times. Or maybe it's just the Taylors demonstrating that they care for art beyond the best sellers like Le Brocquy, Crozier etc.
The current show is just as uncommercial - and even at the very modest prices (less that €2K) only a couple had sold on the opening night. I like the work a lot - it's mainly very minimalist water-colour nudes, jagged and expressive, occasionally suggestive of Schiele. In the midst of these spare pieces are a couple of cryptic videos. One features a girl in a crisp white blouse getting knocked over and covered by great dark waves of black paint - good fun for the kids. The other shows an almost disembodied arm making patterns on a wall - occasionally, fleetingly, a nipple is seen.
