'You Are Here' (detail) oil on canvas,
'A Lot of Crazy Stuff Keeps Coming', oil on canvas, 120 x 100cm. On show at Palazzo Provana Di Collegno, Turin, Italy. 23.Oct - 6.Nov 2025, curated by Valeria Ceregini.
Generously supported by Culture Ireland.
Generously supported by Culture Ireland.
I Think I Made You Up Inside My Head, Palazzo Provana Di Collegno, Turin, Italy. 23.Oct - 6.Nov 2025
In Thomas Brezing’s exhibition I Think I Made You Up Inside My Head, painting becomes a meditation on the fragile thresholds of existence — the shifting space between life and death, memory and forgetting, presence and disappearance.
Set within the Baroque architecture of Palazzo Provana di Collegno, once a noble residence and later a school, the exhibition resonates with the building’s layered history of power and education. Brezing’s portraits evoke the still life tradition, where vitality and decay coexist. His luminous, fragmented heads recall the suspended states captured in Baroque masterpieces; moments of revelation where the body acknowledges its own transience.
Echoing the existential intensity of Francis Bacon, Brezing’s works reveal the face as a site of both emotion and fracture, a psychological still life oscillating between becoming and fading. Borrowing its title from Sylvia Plath’s poem ‘Mad Girl’s Love Song’, the exhibition invites viewers into a space where imagination and reality merge, a fragile interval illuminated by the inner light of consciousness.
- Valeria Ceregini, October 2025
Set within the Baroque architecture of Palazzo Provana di Collegno, once a noble residence and later a school, the exhibition resonates with the building’s layered history of power and education. Brezing’s portraits evoke the still life tradition, where vitality and decay coexist. His luminous, fragmented heads recall the suspended states captured in Baroque masterpieces; moments of revelation where the body acknowledges its own transience.
Echoing the existential intensity of Francis Bacon, Brezing’s works reveal the face as a site of both emotion and fracture, a psychological still life oscillating between becoming and fading. Borrowing its title from Sylvia Plath’s poem ‘Mad Girl’s Love Song’, the exhibition invites viewers into a space where imagination and reality merge, a fragile interval illuminated by the inner light of consciousness.
- Valeria Ceregini, October 2025
In the new episode of the podcast Books for Breakfast my book Scaffold is being reviewed by poet Adam Wyeth alongside other collections. Please click here to listen:
Chttps://booksforbreakfast.buzzsprout.com/1162427/episodes/17915669-84-new-poetry-collections-reviewed
A few snippets of what he said: 'Brezing is such a poet of colour, vigour and muscularity' 'visual energy comes to play' 'the collection is also full of love for other poets' 'brilliantly imaginative' '... reflects the world of reality and transforms it, there are forms of metamorphosis running through it. He is a painter as well and we get that real visceral physical sense in his work'. - Adam Wyeth -
“In this second collection there is a palpable maturation, especially in formal confidence. Added to the exceptional image-making, drawn from careful excavation of feeling and the rendering of a highly alert sense memory, we are invited to bear witness as he reflects and refracts his life experience, the inner life above all.”
Martin Drury, August 2025
Scaffold is published by:
www.scotuspress.com
Martin Drury, August 2025
Scaffold is published by:
www.scotuspress.com
This Too Will Pass, at Interface, curated by Valeria Ceregini, 12. - 27. July 2025.,
Left: What We Know is Incomplete, oil on canvas, 60 x 80cm. Right: Found Object, oil on canvas, 60 x 80cm.
Left: What We Know is Incomplete, oil on canvas, 60 x 80cm. Right: Found Object, oil on canvas, 60 x 80cm.
This Too Will Pass, at Interface, curated by Valeria Ceregini, 12. - 27. July 2025. I had 8 paintings in this group show. Above: Overpass, oil on canvas, 45 x 60cm.
This Too Will Pass at Interface Inagh, from 12th - 27th July
Now showing at Custom House Gallery & Studios Westport: Human Scaffold, until 20. July 2025.
At Custom House Gallery & Studios Westport: Human Scaffold, 26. June - 20. July 2025.
Image: Head, oil on canvas, 100 x 100cm.
Image: Head, oil on canvas, 100 x 100cm.
Poetry Book launch at the IIMS Balbriggan, 27 05 2025. My new poetry collection Scaffold can be purchased from www.scotuspress.com
At the book launch from left to right: Jack Harte, Juliana Adelman, David O'Neill, Thomas Brezing, Emma Brezing, Fiona O'Rourke and Darren Rogers. 27 05 2025 www.scotuspress.com
Oil on Fabriano paper, 100 x 70cm, 2025
Experimental Monoprints, works in progress, February 2025
Book Intervention at Interface, Co.Galway in association with Cliften Arts Festival. Here, The Considered Line is curated by Lenka Sykorova, September 2024.
Photo credit: Valeria Ceregini
Photo credit: Valeria Ceregini
From the Human Scaffold series, 120 x 100cm, oil on canvas, 2024
Work in progress at Ardgillan Studio 2024, 80 x 80cm oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Fingal Ardgillan Castle Studio Award 2023/24.
Ardgillan Studio August 2024. Courtesy of the Fingal Ardgillan Castle Studio Award 2023/24.
Currently showing at Ardgillan Gallery, Summer Show, curated by Aisling Dunne:
Human Scaffold 1, oil on canvas, 38 x 44cm
Human Scaffold 1, oil on canvas, 38 x 44cm
Recovery, oil on canvas, 90 x 90cm, showing from 1st June 2024 at Hambly & Hambly, Enniskillen.
An exhibition of the previous winners of The John Richardson French Residency Award
Artists: Gary Robinson painter, Clara Tracey musician, Leonie Ngahuia Mansbridge painter, Geoff O’Keefe painter, Ciara Gormley painter, Thomas Brezing artist & poet and the residency mentor - Eamon Colman.
An exhibition of the previous winners of The John Richardson French Residency Award
Artists: Gary Robinson painter, Clara Tracey musician, Leonie Ngahuia Mansbridge painter, Geoff O’Keefe painter, Ciara Gormley painter, Thomas Brezing artist & poet and the residency mentor - Eamon Colman.
Strokestown International Poetry Festival, 5th May 2024. Left to right: Enda Wyley (poet and competition judge), Thomas Brezing, Catherine Phil MacCarthy, Catherine Ann Cullen, Joe Woods (poet and festival director).
The poem which won 1st prize:
Living with Tomas
The book lice love Tomas Tranströmer.
When they sprint across his pages
I can hear them sing in Swedish.
His words make them joyful
and for a moment they forget
with every page-turn their lives
can be wiped onto the paper
to the silence of a blood clot.
What decides their death
is how long I linger on each poem.
They act goofy on the page,
like commuters wearing lifejackets,
or carrying packed suitcases to a dry country.
All of them are just born, starting new lives
except for the five-week old elders, who lie
listless, face to face, in an endless buffet of eggs.
The bedrooms are located in the spines of the books
where they keep their kitsch, where they ride
on fungi deposits stored away for winter,
play king of karaoke and warm dancing,
kiss each other goodnight on the forehead
and sleep knotted like briars. When retiring
from eating glue and disfiguring pages,
their organs speak in clicks to new words learned.
This close to Tomas Tranströmer they fall
asleep in the pages as in sheets of sugar.
Thomas Brezing
The poem which won 1st prize:
Living with Tomas
The book lice love Tomas Tranströmer.
When they sprint across his pages
I can hear them sing in Swedish.
His words make them joyful
and for a moment they forget
with every page-turn their lives
can be wiped onto the paper
to the silence of a blood clot.
What decides their death
is how long I linger on each poem.
They act goofy on the page,
like commuters wearing lifejackets,
or carrying packed suitcases to a dry country.
All of them are just born, starting new lives
except for the five-week old elders, who lie
listless, face to face, in an endless buffet of eggs.
The bedrooms are located in the spines of the books
where they keep their kitsch, where they ride
on fungi deposits stored away for winter,
play king of karaoke and warm dancing,
kiss each other goodnight on the forehead
and sleep knotted like briars. When retiring
from eating glue and disfiguring pages,
their organs speak in clicks to new words learned.
This close to Tomas Tranströmer they fall
asleep in the pages as in sheets of sugar.
Thomas Brezing
Can't Stop Drinking the Gone Heart-beats, oil on canvas, 200 x 400cm
Photo: David O'Neill
Photo: David O'Neill
Work in progress at Ardgillan Studio, January 2024. Courtesy of the Fingal Ardgillan Castle Studio Award 2023.
Photo: Sharon Murphy
Photo: Sharon Murphy
You Can't Get There From Here (Mixed media: 200 Barbie dolls, concrete). As part of the How It's Made Festival, curated by Valeria Ceregini, September 2023. The Vault, Balbriggan, Co.Dublin.
Photo: Simone Bonzano
Photo: Simone Bonzano
Artists talk, Aisling Dunne with Thomas Brezing, 2nd Sept 2023, at Ardgillan Castle Gallery. Photo David O'Neill
This Dark Storehouse, Ardgillan Gallery 2023.
Photo: Aisling Dunne
Photo: Aisling Dunne
Photo: David O'Neill
This Dark Storehouse, a solo exhibition by Thomas Brezing. Saturday 12th August until Sunday 23rd September 2023.
This Dark Storehouse, a multi-media installation that repositions discarded, pre-loved materials as a reflection of the interconnected nature of the earth and the creatures that inhabit it. Using the discarded remains of mass-produced products, Brezing creates a para-truth environment, a hybridisation that speaks to the transactional relationship of humans and the decay that we leave behind. With this work, Brezing seeks to find a beauty and poetry in the objects we consume. This Dark Storehouse asks the viewer to consider the connected nature, and collective impact, of our existence.
- Aisling Dunne, curator Ardgillan Gallery.
This Dark Storehouse, a multi-media installation that repositions discarded, pre-loved materials as a reflection of the interconnected nature of the earth and the creatures that inhabit it. Using the discarded remains of mass-produced products, Brezing creates a para-truth environment, a hybridisation that speaks to the transactional relationship of humans and the decay that we leave behind. With this work, Brezing seeks to find a beauty and poetry in the objects we consume. This Dark Storehouse asks the viewer to consider the connected nature, and collective impact, of our existence.
- Aisling Dunne, curator Ardgillan Gallery.
(from left to right) Leonie Mansbridge, Geoff O'Keeffe, TB, Ciara Gormley, at Chateau Mornay, France, Residency June 2023. Photo: Ciara Hambly.
At the John Richardson French Residency, Dampierre-sur-Betonne, June/July 2023
At Dunbar House, Hambly & Hambly, end of May 2023, with previous and current recipients of the John Richardson French Residency Award 2023. For more information please go to: hamblyandhambly.com/French-Residency
Perhaps The Future Doesn't Need Us, oil on canvas. 200 x 440 cm. Acquired for the The Arts Council Collection in 2022.
Reading/performance at The Vault, Balbriggan, December 2022, during Reclaiming The Arts. Installation work: Will There Be Singing In The Dark, mixed media (old rugby balls, inverted, hand-sewn, stuffed, painted)
Photos credit: Fintan Clarke.
Photos credit: Fintan Clarke.
Reading on Culture Night, September 2022 at The Warehouse, Balbriggan.
Photo credit: Fintan Clarke
Photo credit: Fintan Clarke
At the Our Balbriggan Hub launch of Anvil Dust, 23. June 2022. Guest readers included Pauline O'Hare, Janet Moran, Liam McGrath, Terry O'Reilly, David Newton and Aine Ivers.
www.scotuspress.com
www.scotuspress.com
Very happy to have received the Fingal County Council, Tyrone Guthrie Centre & Bealtaine Festival Residency 2022.
A month of painting and writing in one of the most beautiful places in Ireland!
For more see: fingalarts.ie/fingal-arts-office/bursaries-funding-residency-schemes/announcement-of-the-recipients-of-the-fcctryone-guthrie-centre-bealtaine-fe
Link to short film made at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in connection with the residency award, with Dr Eimear O'Connor, Una Sealy, Rory O'Byrne and Thomas Brezing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBvdWsK8-3s&t=22s
At the launch of Anvil Dust at the Irish Writers Centre, Dublin, April 2022. From left to right: Enda Wyley, TB, Sharon Murphy and Martin Drury.
My debut collection Anvil Dust, published by Scotus Press, is available for purchase from:
www.scotuspress.com
www.scotuspress.com
The Numbers Don't Add Up, Limerick City Gallery, 2021. As part of The Loneliness of Being German, with Vera Klute.
To watch a poetry reading in connection with the exhibition by Enda Wyley and Thomas Brezing please click here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=frdrdURWA-I
To watch a poetry reading in connection with the exhibition by Enda Wyley and Thomas Brezing please click here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=frdrdURWA-I
Perhaps Our Awakening Is Our Deeper Dream at Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, curated by Sharon Murphy,
Friday 2.October - Wednesday 28th October 2020.
To view a video about the exhibition please click here
This exhibition was supported by Fingal Arts Office through the curator-artist mentorship scheme.
The painting Leaving Nineveh which is part of the Fingal County Council Collection has been permanently installed in the Our Balbriggan office, Co. Dublin..
''Will There Be Singing In The Dark' is an installation work which was part of 'The Consequence Of Memory And Pulse' 3-person show at the Burren College of Art, Ballyvaughan https://www.burrencollege.ie/
12th September - 18th October 2019, with Sean Cotter, Thomas Brezing and Gary Robinson.
My contribution to this exhibition was supported by Fingal Arts Office through the Fingal Artists Support Scheme Award 2019.
12th September - 18th October 2019, with Sean Cotter, Thomas Brezing and Gary Robinson.
My contribution to this exhibition was supported by Fingal Arts Office through the Fingal Artists Support Scheme Award 2019.
Working desk at Heinrich Boll Cottage, Achill, Co. Mayo, during residency November 2018
Anvil Dust, solo exhibition at the Molesworth Gallery, Dublin, 7th - 28th September 2018.
Image: Father, This Is Your Anvil Dust, oil on canvas, 200 x 220cm (photo by Jozef V. Voda)
For more please click here
‘A quote from Wendell Berry in the exhibition catalogue provides a clue to Thomas Brezing’s concerns. Berry was a romantic agrarian who criticised urbanisation and flight from the land. Brezing’s images of huddled masses, lost souls and plodding lines of humanity reference our current immigration problems, and the alienation of those displaced from the land. The Technicolor nightmare of the city, as seen in Hand in Hand is the Only Way to Land, is the inferno into which these unfortunates have been thrown. Anvil Dust, the title of the show, is a by-product of the blacksmith’s trade. Brezing was brought up in the Black Forest and remembers his blacksmith father’s hands being permanently stained grey by ingrained dust. In a parallel that would excite a Freudian, Brezing also aspires to permanence in grey. He has said ‘Every painting is a new attempt at painting an empty grey canvas.’ Some potential viewers will be encouraged to hear he has so far failed in this minimalist ambition. These paintings are richly coloured expressionist works dense with the bustle of a busy and preposterous world, and bleak with the plight of humanity gathered in hopelessness.’
John P O’Sullivan, 23rd September 2018, The Sunday Times
Image: Father, This Is Your Anvil Dust, oil on canvas, 200 x 220cm (photo by Jozef V. Voda)
For more please click here
‘A quote from Wendell Berry in the exhibition catalogue provides a clue to Thomas Brezing’s concerns. Berry was a romantic agrarian who criticised urbanisation and flight from the land. Brezing’s images of huddled masses, lost souls and plodding lines of humanity reference our current immigration problems, and the alienation of those displaced from the land. The Technicolor nightmare of the city, as seen in Hand in Hand is the Only Way to Land, is the inferno into which these unfortunates have been thrown. Anvil Dust, the title of the show, is a by-product of the blacksmith’s trade. Brezing was brought up in the Black Forest and remembers his blacksmith father’s hands being permanently stained grey by ingrained dust. In a parallel that would excite a Freudian, Brezing also aspires to permanence in grey. He has said ‘Every painting is a new attempt at painting an empty grey canvas.’ Some potential viewers will be encouraged to hear he has so far failed in this minimalist ambition. These paintings are richly coloured expressionist works dense with the bustle of a busy and preposterous world, and bleak with the plight of humanity gathered in hopelessness.’
John P O’Sullivan, 23rd September 2018, The Sunday Times
Thomas Brezing (left), Gerard Dillon (right).
The RHA or Royal Hibernian Academy presented a selection of iconic works from the Drogheda Municipal Art Collection from some of Irelands best known and influential artists dating from the eighteenth century to present day in the Dr. Tony Ryan Gallery from 5 October – 19 November 2017.
RHA Director, Patrick T. Murphy, working alongside Aoife Ruane, Director of the Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda curated a selection of highlights from the collection. Nano Reid, Mainie Jellet, Thomas Brezing, Jessica Foley, Simon Coleman, Kate Byrne, Gerard Dillon, Beatrice Glenavy, May Guinness, Letitia Mary Hamilton, Anthony Haughey, Grace Henry, Evie Hone, John Francis Kelly, Claire Marsh, Norah McGuinness, Sean McSweeney, Sinead Ni Mhaonaigh, Jackie Nickerson, Bea Orpen, Sarah Purser, Patrick Pye, Hilda Roberts, Mary Swanzy, Charles Tyrrell.
The RHA or Royal Hibernian Academy presented a selection of iconic works from the Drogheda Municipal Art Collection from some of Irelands best known and influential artists dating from the eighteenth century to present day in the Dr. Tony Ryan Gallery from 5 October – 19 November 2017.
RHA Director, Patrick T. Murphy, working alongside Aoife Ruane, Director of the Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda curated a selection of highlights from the collection. Nano Reid, Mainie Jellet, Thomas Brezing, Jessica Foley, Simon Coleman, Kate Byrne, Gerard Dillon, Beatrice Glenavy, May Guinness, Letitia Mary Hamilton, Anthony Haughey, Grace Henry, Evie Hone, John Francis Kelly, Claire Marsh, Norah McGuinness, Sean McSweeney, Sinead Ni Mhaonaigh, Jackie Nickerson, Bea Orpen, Sarah Purser, Patrick Pye, Hilda Roberts, Mary Swanzy, Charles Tyrrell.
Film still, Out Too Far (Wishing Too Many Things)
To watch the film (9 min duration) please click here
To watch the film (9 min duration) please click here
