Breon O’Casey was a highly productive and much respected artist for four decades but his public reputation only recently spread beyond certain interlocked art and craft circles.
He was a jeweller, a painter, an etcher and a weaver and more recently had taken to sculpture. Although his gold and silver jewellery won him an international reputation with connoisseurs and his hand-woven creations have been targeted by knowledgeable collectors, in his later years he concentrated on painting, sculpture and printmaking. The son of the playwright Sean O’Casey, for most of his career Breon O’Casey lived in Cornwall and was closely associated with the St Ives School of painters and sculptors. An apprenticeship to the sculptors Denis Mitchell and Barbara Hepworth confirmed his feeling for materials and for working with his hands. He also benefited from his friendships with other leading artists, such as Peter Lanyon, John Wells and Tony O’Malley. Breon O’Casey worked closely with Hugh Stoneman experimenting with linocut, etching and carborundum.
