Brigid Marlin

Brigid Marlin (born 16 January 1936) 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 (Mische) technique of the Flemish and Italian Renaissance painters Jan van Eyck and Giovanni Bellini. In 1961 she founded the Inscape 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' (shown right) 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.