Brian Purcell is a poet, painter and singer based in Bellingen on the mid-north coast of NSW.

Brian has a BA in Art from COFA, Sydney, and has been exhibiting since 1988 when he contributed to a 4-person show at the legendary Kelly Street Kollectiv gallery in Ultimo. A widely-published poet, and lead singer of the cult 80s-90s band Distant Locust, he has also created collages and visual poems, some of which illustrated his first book of lyrics and poems, Lovely Infestation. Brian’s paintings are concerned with the effects of light and colour on the Australian landscape, and the tensions between representation and abstraction. Although primarily working with landscape, he also paints still life and figurative paintings.

In March 2021 he had a successful one-person show of paintings, The Day on Fire, at the Shop Gallery in Glebe NSW. The follow-up exhibition at the Shop, Estuary (February 2023) showed a deepening of vision, technique and style that’s recently been recognised by Bluethumb, where he is a featured artist and twice a finalist in their national art prize. He had a third successful exhibition at The Shop, Floodlands, in January 2025. The painting Cathedral, Gums at Bongil, was the subject of a two-page spread in the Autumn 23 issue of Openbook, the colour magazine of the State Library of NSW, along with a poem it inspired by Magdalena Ball. For the past few 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. In late 2023 he visited Europe, where he was thrilled to see amazing paintings in the UK, France and Spain, and sketch in the open air in Brittany. This year he is excited to be travelling and staying for a month at the amazing arts residency, Messen in Norway. The journey continues…

Some of these paintings are for sale, go to Products – Brian Purcell art

The Cornfield, Brittany 2024