Brigid Marlin is an American artist based in Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...

, UK. She studied in Dublin, Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

, New York

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 and Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 where, under the guidance of the Austrian artist Ernst Fuchs

Ernst Fuchs (artist)

Ernst Fuchs is an Austrian painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, architect, stage designer, composer, poet, singer and one of the founders of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. In 1972 he acquired the derelict Otto Wagner Villa in Hütteldorf, which he restored and transformed...

, she learned the oil and egg tempera (Mische

Mischtechnik

Mische technique or mixed technique or mixed method is a method of painting where egg tempera is used in combination with oil based paints and resins to create the possibility of rendering a luminous, resonant realism. The egg yolk of the egg tempera is a naturally occurring emulsion of water and...

) technique of the Flemish and Italian Renaissance painters Jan van Eyck

Jan van Eyck

Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century....

 and Giovanni Bellini

Giovanni Bellini

Giovanni Bellini was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. His father was Jacopo Bellini, his brother was Gentile Bellini, and his brother-in-law was Andrea Mantegna. He is considered to have revolutionized Venetian painting, moving it...

. In 1961 she founded the Inscape

Inscape (visual art)

Inscape, in visual art, is a term especially associated with certain works of Chilean artist Roberto Matta, but it is also used in other senses within the visual arts. Though the term inscape has been applied to stylistically diverse artworks, it usually conveys some notion of representing the...

 group, which subsequently became the Society for Art of Imagination.

Marlin's paintings typically feature visionary and psychic subjects, often with scriptural themes akin to the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism

Vienna School of Fantastic Realism

The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism is a group of artists founded in Vienna in 1946. It includes Ernst Fuchs, Arik Brauer, Rudolf Hausner, Wolfgang Hutter, Anton Lehmden and Fritz Janschka, all students of Professor Albert Paris Gütersloh at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts...

. One of her best-known paintings 'The Rod' (shown right) http://www.wire-frame.net/fineart.html#The_Rod won the 1974 Visions of the Future competition and was greatly admired by J G Ballard

J. G. Ballard

James Graham Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, and prominent member of the New Wave movement in science fiction...

, who later commissioned her to reproduce the Belgian surrealist Paul Delvaux’s

Paul Delvaux

Paul Delvaux was a Belgian painter, associated with Surrealism, famous for his paintings of female nudes.-Biography:...

 two 'lost' paintings 'The Rape' and 'The Mirror'. Her portrait of Ballard was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery

National Portrait Gallery (England)

The National Portrait Gallery is an art gallery in London, England, housing a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was the first portrait gallery in the world when it opened in 1856. The gallery moved in 1896 to its current site at St Martin's Place, off...

, London, in 1989, and she has also painted portraits of the Dalai Lama and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.

Personal life

Marlin is the daughter of artist and children's author Hilda van Stockum

Hilda van Stockum

Hilda Gerarda van Stockum was a children's book author and artist. She was born in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Her father was an officer in the Dutch Royal Navy. She grew up in the Netherlands and Ireland, living for many years in the United States, and lived in England from about 1973...

. She married in 1957, had three sons (the eldest of whom died in 1979) and divorced in 1980. These experiences are documented in her book From East to West: Awakening to a Spiritual Search.

Books

• 1989 - From East to West: Awakening to a Spiritual Search (Brigid Marlin) (Fount) ISBN 0-00-622762-7
• 1991 - Paintings in the Mische Technique
• 1999 - Visions of Venice (Christine Marlin, Brigid Marlin) (Byronic Books) ISBN 095145711X
• 2007 - Metamorphosis (beinArt) ISBN 978-0-9803231-0-8
• 2007 - Clara and the Computer Mouse (Brigid Marlin) ISBN 978-0-9557580-1-0

Awards

• 1974 - Visions of the Future, first prize for 'The Rod'
• 1984 - International Art Appreciation Award, USA, first prize
• 1988 - International Painting Competition, Dublin, first prize

External links

• official website
• Society for Art of Imagination
• beinArt International Surreal Art Collective
• 'J G Ballard' by Brigid Marlin National Portrait Gallery, London
• 'The Rod' limited edition fine art print by Brigid Marlin
• Unweave A Rainbow Brigid Marlin interviewed by Natalie Dekel