ANDREA MARIE BREILING

Early Years

Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Andrea Marie Breiling was raised in a creative family and encouraged to explore art from a young age. She earned her BFA in Studio Art and Gender Studies from the University of California, Irvine in 2008, and her MFA in Studio Art from Claremont Graduate University in 2014. After formative years spent in California, Mexico City, and Los Angeles, Breiling relocated to the New York metropolitan area, where she continues to live and work.

Andrea Marie Breiling Artworks

Andrea Marie Breiling's practice is defined by her use of spray paint to create vibrant, immersive abstract paintings that evoke both spontaneity and control. Her technique involves building up multiple cross-hatched layers of colour, resulting in works that are at once ethereal and intensely physical. Breiling's paintings frequently reference nature, music, and personal experience, and are known for their dynamic compositions and bold palettes.

Early Abstraction and Transition to Spray Paint

Breiling began her career painting with brushes in a bold, colourful abstract style, but soon sought to move beyond traditional methods. Dissatisfied with comparisons to historical abstraction, she experimented with staining and eventually adopted spray paint as her primary medium, manipulating various spray tips to create lines that mimic brushstrokes.

'BIG MOOD' and Cross-Hatched Canvases

In BIG MOOD (2020), her solo exhibition at Night Gallery, Los Angeles, Breiling presented works such as Give Me All Your Drugs and Let it Go, which feature neon cross-hatching and overlapping lines that generate a sense of volatile colour and movement. This period marked a shift towards more optical, less material paintings, with compositions that balance chaos and structure.

Chromatic Evolution and Nature's Influence

By 2021, Breiling's palette had become softer and more naturalistic, as seen in works like Lucy in the Sky and Under the Bridge (2021). Her solo exhibition Sweet Dreams of Rhythm and Dancing (2021) at Almine Rech, London, showcased feathery marks and a transcendental haze, reflecting her studio's woodland surroundings and a growing interest in the atmospheric.

International Exhibitions and 'Fence, Fall, Touch'

Breiling's first solo exhibition in China, Fence, Fall, Touch (2022) at Almine Rech, Beijing, unified her canvases with a base layer of yellow—a colour symbolising optimism and joy. Music, particularly the song Empty Floor by Jan Blomqvist, was a key influence on this series, guiding both the mood and titles of the paintings.

Select Awards and Accolades

Breiling's work is held in the collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix; Deji Art Museum, Nanjing; Dangxia Art Foundation, Beijing; and X Museum, Beijing.

Exhibitions

Andrea Marie Breiling has been the subject of both solo exhibitions and group exhibitions at important galleries and institutions. Below is a selection of important exhibitions.

Solo Exhibitions

• Kissing the Glass, Almine Rech, Paris, France, 2024
• There's an ocean here but you are all I see, CCA Andratx, Mallorca, Spain, 2024
• Swallowtail, Almine Rech, New York, 2023
• The Swallow, Almine Rech, Brussels, 2023
• Fence, Fall, Touch: 10 new paintings by Andrea Marie Breiling, Almine Rech, Beijing, 2022
• Ribbons, Night Gallery at Villa Paula, Miami, 2022
• Sweet Dreams of Rhythm and Dancing, Almine Rech, London, 2021
• BIG MOOD, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, 2020

Group Exhibitions

• Frieze Seoul, with Night Gallery, Seoul, Korea, 2023
• Controlled Chaos, Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, 2022.
• Various Small Fires, Seoul, Korea, 2021
• Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, 2021

Website and Instagram

Andrea Marie Breiling's website can be found here, and Andrea Marie Breiling's Instagram can be found here.

More Reading

Andrea Marie Breiling's practice has been featured in leading magazines including Artforum, Cultured, Whitehot Magazine, and LA Weekly. In Ocula Magazine, Breiling discusses the role of music in her studio, stating: 'Essentially I would be doomed without music'.

FAQs

Ocula | 2025