Born in London 1928, Breon O’Casey was the son of the actor Eileen Reynolds and the playwright Sean O'Casey. In 1937 the family moved to Totnes where Breon O'Casey thrived at Dartington Hall School. Dartington was founded by Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst, who had a vision of a Utopian community which combined the working of the land with the life of the spirit through the arts. The emphasis the school placed on physical activities and skills, considering them equally important to academic skills, was crucial to him. At Dartington O’Casey learnt “to think with my hands as well as my head.”
After National Service he attended the Anglo-French Art Centre in St John’s Wood. For years he struggled to survive as an artist.
After hearing about the painter Alfred Wallis in St Ives he was inspired to live in the artist community in Cornwall. There he had his own studio but he also worked part time as a studio assistant to Dennis Mitchell and Barbara Hepworth.
Breon O'Casey was a painter, sculptor and silversmith. He was seventy years old before he was able to devote himself entirely to painting and sculpture. His works can now be found in the permanent collections of The Hermitage Museum, Kettle’s Yard, Leed’s Museum and Art Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, amongst many others.
O'Casey's idiosyncratic vision is manifest in a number of "Assumptions" he posited within his artistic philosophy:
"I hold these truths to be self-evident:
That there is such a thing as good art, and it has a permanent intrinsic value
That beauty is not in the eye of the beholder
That at least 90% of contemporary art at a time in history, without strong traditions, is bad art
That good contemporary art must always have a small following, and that this is a good thing
That most artists are stupid
That all artists are selfish
That criticism, to be any good, must be destructive
That I have never met a child, and I don’t believe one exists, who is not an artist
That the Bible is an early scientific work
That evolution is a continuous process, that so slow it can be ignored"
