Brian Purcell

Brian Purcell is a painter/poet from Bellingen, on NSW’s mid-north coast, working mainly in landscape and still-life. He’s had three successful one-person shows of paintings, The Day on Fire in 2021, Estuary in 2023 and Floodlands in 2025, at the Shop Gallery in Glebe NSW. He’s a featured artist at Bluethumb and has been a finalist in their Art Prizes in 2022-24.

Brian’s paintings are concerned with the effects of light and colour on the Australian landscape, and the tensions between representation and abstraction.

In July 2025 he had a one-month art residency awarded by the prestigious Kunstnarhuset Messen, in the western area of Norway. He painted 11 panels of the fjord and mountains while there. Although primarily working with landscape, he also paints still life and figurative paintings.

For the past four years he has been able to concentrate on painting more than any other period in his life, and is looking forward to pushing his comfort zones in a continuing journey through painting.
Brian has a small show at the Bellingen Framing Art Gallery for January 3rd to 11th, 2026.