Freed from desire, mind and senses purified
Sean Burns on William Brickel
A lumbering brown and grey tree trunk sways sideways while reverberations of yellowy-grey light appear to splay from its roots in shock waves. Above, a canopy of shadowy foliage swoops down like army netting, partially concealing a distant view of rolling hills. Closer to us, graphic strands of dark green grass swirl up in neat arrangements beside more bunched tufts that shoot out in little groups. This landscape feels both ominous and liberated, a meeting of the pastoral and the psychological.
William Brickel often deals with contradictions. He seems set on making two things happen at once, usually creating an awkward atmosphere of tension. If winter has been a desolate period, we might expect spring to bring a renewed sense of hope. However, the title of this monumental oil on canvas work, April is the Cruellest Month (2024), swiftly dispels any such notions. It affirms that antagonistic forces are in motion, even in unpopulated British landscapes that we typically associate with ‘romantic’ or ‘idyllic’ descriptions.
There’s nothing ideal about April, and Brickel doesn’t romanticise, either. His work is deeply personal, drawing inspiration from his childhood. This was a time of naivety and playfulness that he both venerates and mourns. However, his journey since then has been fraught with challenges. Through his art, he grapples with the end of his innocence, a process that may never truly be over. ‘I think of adolescence as a kind of spring’, he says. Here, the season’s emergence is the onset of the overwhelming emotions you might feel as a teenager: confusion and rage, maybe.
In Brickel’s figurative works, such as the watercolour A Heavy Feeling (2022), men dance around one another, negotiating their awkward, oversized physicality – hands like bricks and thick-set thighs in brown trousers. These men aren’t the lithesome twinks of his contemporaries, such as Julien Nguyen. In Brickel’s world, there is a constant awareness of the interactions and spatial relationships between male bodies. The nature of the protagonist’s association always feels uncertain – clearly, an impulse for intimacy is tricky to realise fully.
In April is the Cruellest Month (2024), the connection isn’t between young men but between the viewer and the landscape – perhaps we’re in the artist’s shoes, looking out. The world doesn’t feel as contained by the frame as the opposite: it attempts to hold the energy of the view, which fires out into the corners and extends beyond the edges. If this is a psychological space, it’s unstable and unpredictable, as the scene seems to want to envelop us inside. It offers a sense of promise shot through with a fundamental fear.
Art historical references spring to mind, but none fit neatly. In Graham Sutherland’s oil on canvas painting Entrance to a Lane (1939), for example, the foliage surrounding the lane’s edges seems to fold upwards in a wave, making the path ahead seem anxious. The end has what appears to be an open door with light seeping through, an incentive to face the journey, perhaps. Whereas, in John Minton’s work, such as the pen, ink and watercolour painting Corsican Landscape (1947), he renders grape leaves and cypress trees in graphical detail against washes of yellow and brown. Sutherland’s path is inimical, while Minton’s scene contains the unbridled qualities of Brickel’s branches and bushes.
A reckoning with the onset of desire is undoubtedly at play here. To me, Brickel is contending with how sexuality is a relational force that inflects more than just how we interact with people. ‘It’s an investigation and also a death’, Brickel observes about painting. A death of what? I wondered. Perhaps the end of childhood marks the beginning of responsibility, where freedom and wonder are left behind.
Nothing within this painting is about clarity. I was reminded of Francis Bacon’s assertion that his job as an artist was to ‘deepen the mystery’, to keep things complicated. For Brickel, there is a distinction between the past and the present; the present can often be lonely. But within that solemnity resides multiple psyches, sometimes in dispute. Indeed, at the core of this practice is an interest in holding all these forceful contradictions – distance and intimacy/quiet and restless/alone and conflicted – together in one volatile moment.
Sean Burns is an artist, editor and writer. He lives in London, UK.
