“I’m into [Charles] Schulz as an artist, a company, and an icon; I got into his stuff just because I liked the looseness of the line work, and I thought that it was just sort of a nice thing to bring into my paintings, even if it’s abstract and unidentifiable,” KAWS told Vogue from his Brooklyn studio. “The way I paint is very tight and very slow, but painting that looseness, even if I’m still doing the same sort of approach that takes me a month to do the painting, it just, I felt, added a nice quality to the work. That really got me into exploring it.” (Brian Donnelly for Vogue).

Brian Donnelly is currently best known as the artist KAWS. KAWS is a New York-based artist who has made a name out of him designing limited edition toys and clothing. He is also a world-renowned artist who exhibits in museums and galleries internationally. His art stands somewhere between fine art and global commerce. KAWS moved beyond the sphere of the exclusive art market to occupy a more complex global market.

Brian Donnelly was born in 1974 in Jersey City, New Jersey. He graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York where he obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts in illustration. After graduating from college in 1996, Brian Donnelly worked for Disney as a freelance animator. At Disney, Brian Donnelly had the opportunity to paint backgrounds and contributed in films such as 101 Dalmatians, Daria, and Doug (Street Art Bio).

In January 2024, the Child Mind Institute moved its headquarters to a new 82,000-square-foot space in Midtown Manhattan. From the beginning, our new home was envisioned not only as a place for clinical care and research, but as a space that feels comforting, human, and inviting for children, teens, and their families. In order to support this vision, CMI established a comprehensive Art Program to foster meaningful engagement between our patients and the artwork around them. Through a thoughtfully curated permanent collection and integrated installations, the program helps create an environment that is stimulating, flexible, and collaborative —a space where we will help tens of thousands of children from 49 states, Washington, DC, and 45 nations over the coming decades and inspire current and future scientists to change the child mental health field as we know it. We hope that the digital archive will give patients and their families further opportunity to explore the collection and learn more about the talented artists that have contributed to our space.