Brian Purcell went to art school in Sydney Australia in the 80s and has been exhibiting since 1988. He's also a widely-published poet, and lead singer of the cult 80s-90s band Distant Locust. He created collages and visual poems, some of which illustrated his first book of lyrics and poems, 'Lovely Infestation' in 1995. He had his first solo exhibition - 'The Day on Fire' - at The Shop Gallery, Glebe, in Sydney in March 2021, followed by 'Estuary' in February 2023 and 'Floodlands' in 2025.
Brian's painting 'Cathedral, Gums at Bongil' was featured in the Autumn 2023 SLNSW's quarterly colour magazine, Openbook. It appears thanks to the wonderful poet Magdalena Ball writing an ekphrastic poem about it! Brian was also a finalist in the Bluethumb Art Prize in 2022-3. He was featured in April 2026 in a 14-page profile in US underground magazine 'Twisted Pulp'. In July 2025 he was granted a month-long residency in the prestigious Messen residency, sketching there the basis for his recent 'Hardanger Fjord' landscapes.
Brian’s paintings are concerned with the effects of light and colour in the Australian landscape, and the tensions between representation and abstraction. Although primarily working with landscape, he also paints still life and figurative paintings. For the past few yearss he has been able to concentrate on painting for the first time in his life, and is looking forward to developing and extending his journey through painting.