Within me there are multitudes and cups of cold tea, 2023

Brennan O’Brien (b. 1999 Cooma) is a visual artist based in Canberra, Australia. They are currently studying a BVA (Painting) at the Australian National University. O’Brien’s practice incorporates oil painting, distemper and drawing mediums to create contemporary subject paintings with surrealist influence. Influenced by artists including Remus Greco and Nicole Eisenmann, O’Brien seeks to draw parallels between conscious states, permeating the canvases with reconstructed memories and dreams. Moments of abstraction tend to enter the paintings where a memory has become hard to reach – dictated by undulant tempi of brush strokes and mark-making. O’Brien has exhibited at WIRES Fundraiser Fire Fight Exhibition at NISHI Gallery in 2020, ANU Graduate Show 2021, and ARIs Concurrent Gallery and Chipz Emporium in 2023. O’Brien was a finalist in the 2023 ANU Drawing Prize.

Brennan O’Brien’s paintings are a reflection of his ongoing investigation of his dreams and imagination. He looks to the aesthetic of liminal art and architecture and draws parallels between conscious and unconscious states

He uses oil paint to bring to life pictures of an ambigious emotional tone, in an attempt to shape and colour a world between the conscious and unconscious.
Brennan’s work is a journey of psychological self-discovery, and he finds meaning in the process of painting.