Brigid Marlin


Brigid Marlin is an American artist based in Hertfordshire, UK. She studied in Dublin, Montreal, New York, Paris and Vienna where, under the guidance of the Austrian artist Ernst Fuchs, she learned the oil and egg tempera technique of the Flemish and Italian Renaissance painters Jan van Eyck and Giovanni Bellini. In 1961 she founded the ins-cape 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. One of her best-known paintings 'The Rod' won the 1974 Visions of the Future competition and was greatly admired by J G Ballard, who later commissioned her to reproduce the Belgian surrealist Paul Delvaux's two 'lost' paintings 'The Rape' and 'The Mirror'. Her portrait of Ballard was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 1989, and she has also painted portraits of the Dalai Lama and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.
Marlin is the daughter of artist and children's author Hilda van Stockum. She married in 1957, had three sons and divorced in 1980. These experiences are documented in her books From East to West: Awakening to a Spiritual Search and A Meaning for Danny.

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