IN THE STUDIO WITH COADY BROWN
Coady
Brown
Figures tightly framed in bars and bedrooms, navigating intimacy and paranoia. Painter of the feminised body and the psychologically charged room.
Photo: Maiwenn Raoult
"I want to make paintings that reflect our current moment, the chaos and anxiety of the world we live in. Sometimes the paintings confront these moments head-on, and sometimes the work is about escaping it all through intimacy and pleasure."
Coady Brown's paintings examine how groups, couples, and solitary figures navigate self-presentation in private and public life. Often situated within the drama and darkness of nightlife, her work explores the nuances of moving through the world in a feminised body. Figures are compressed into tightly framed, intimate spaces that expose the subtle complexities of our interpersonal connections: bars, bedrooms, the threshold between indoors and the unknown that awaits outside. It is a world fraught with the instability and paranoia of contemporary life, and also with its pleasures.
She came to Philadelphia at the beginning of the pandemic after years of moving from one art residency to another, east coast to LA to Vermont to Massachusetts. At a certain point, she says, stability feeds you more than constant change and new experiences. Or maybe that is just being an artist in your thirties versus your twenties. She opened two solo shows the following September: one at Taymour Grahne in London, and one at Shulamit Nazarian in Los Angeles. She is now lucky enough to focus on larger projects and take more time with things in the studio.
The people in my life are by far my greatest inspiration. I went to the Yale Norfolk School of Art during the summer of my senior year of college, and there I met the people that would change my life forever. I found my best friends, who are incredible, inspiring, mind-blowing artists in ways that are so different from how I see and experience the world. They brought me out of my shell and showed me beauty through their vision.
It took me a while to finally arrive to my work as it stands today, but I was just so in love with people, their bodies, how they express themselves, that it was only natural that I would make work about it. This group of friends were the ultimate muse. And while the work has developed beyond being solely about my personal relationships, it was through them that I found my voice and established my visual vocabulary.
I always start with drawing. From there, things either begin really abstractly, or really concretely. A painting sometimes will start because there is a certain pattern I want to experiment with, or a pose, and then the painting will build around that. Other times, I will make a painting that is based on a colour relationship: blue and yellow, or pink and green. Combinations that might not initially be pleasing but become a puzzle I need to deconstruct.
I make a pencil drawing where the composition is 90% resolved, and then that translates to an underpainting. I always want to leave room for growth and change while I am working, because it always turns out that some of the best things about the work happen in spontaneous moments. I learn the most when I am open to the process of making. It is the most rewarding part about being an artist.
"Something felt compelling but also troubling to so wantonly depict the female body. It felt very one-sided, like there were entire aspects of the narrative being left out: the woman's experience and perspective. What did these women think? Did the end result feel true to how they saw themselves?"
Coady Brown · On her relationship with art historyTo me, an icon is someone who defines things on their own terms, and is a trailblazer for new ways of thinking in how we understand ourselves and the world around us. And while he recently passed, for me he is still an icon of our time: Prince. He showed us new ways to be sexy, cool, confident, impassioned. He broke all the rules and gave no fucks. He was such an artist, and followed his instincts and created the world that he wanted to see, top to bottom.
For me wellbeing means balance. And yes that of course means a balance of sleep and exercise and eating well, but it also means living outside of your routine and comfort zone, trying to get outside of your own way and into a more open mindset. I feel like our bodies are so much smarter than our minds, and if we do things that allow us to be in tune with our bodies and get outside of our own head, we walk away with a richer experience of the world, and probably some more interesting ideas.
If you haven't already, listen to the album What's Your Pleasure by Jessie Ware, the deluxe version. That album pulls together so many themes in my life and work, and is such a stunning tapestry of what it means to enjoy and explore having a body in this world. Also, the album is undeniably a love letter to Prince. So there you go, full circle.
"The emphasis on fashion is a celebratory declaration of the body. Fashion becomes a site of freedom, a place to explore self-expression and presentation."
Brown's figures inhabit tightly framed, intimate spaces in paintings that explore the vulnerability of our connections and relationships. Engaging in acts of self-presentation and self-preservation, they delicately juggle their public and private lives. Figures become reflections of their environments, mirroring heightened, surreal, frenetic, sexy, and sorrowful states.
Figures tend to be androgynous, understanding gender fluidly, and that femininity can be a site of both strength and extreme vulnerability. Caught in various states of harmony, anxiety, ecstasy, and anguish, they navigate the world and uncertainty of the everyday: from intimate boundaries in bars and bedrooms to the unknown that awaits outdoors.
Her relationship with art history is complicated and deliberate. She came to Picasso, Modigliani, Gauguin and Cezanne drawn by their paintings of women: clearly their muses, lovers and companions. "Something felt compelling but also troubling," she says. "It felt very one-sided, like there were entire aspects of the narrative being left out: the woman's experience and perspective. What did these women think? Did the end result feel true to how they saw themselves?" Her own paintings answer that question, or at least refuse to leave it unasked.
An independent platform dedicated to artists, musicians, photographers, designers, and thinkers at every stage. Every interview is selected for depth, not reach.
✦ Explore all our interviews → Coady Brown at Nazarian / Curcio ↗"I see art as such an interesting barometer of society. I process a lot of things from my personal life in the work: my relationships, fears, anxieties, and struggles with spirituality and optimism."
More painting and visual art from the Antakly Projects archive.
Read on Substack ↗
Risk, Courtesy of the artist
