ANDREA BREWSTER: ENCHANTED GARDEN
May 5th, 2023 – June 10th, 2023
Andrea Brewster has long been fascinated by the intricate beauty of nature. The Dutch flower paintings of the 17th century, with their realistic and detailed depictions of floral bouquets, have also been an inspiration to her. With her new series of work entitled, Enchanted Garden, she creates something that goes beyond mere representation and captures the ephemerality of nature’s wonder.
For this series, Brewster utilized digital tools, like artificial intelligence, to create semi-abstract floral compositions that reflect an impression of nature. This approach uses color and light to highlight the essence of her subject. In this way, Brewster underscores both the fleeting qualities of nature and the ability of floral images to explore themes such as the future of the natural environment in which we live.
Brewster’s work shares with the Dutch painters a method of montaging disparate parts to create the final composition. For instance, the Dutch painters combined flowers from different countries, or flowers that did not bloom at the same time to create their work. By blurring the line between reality and imagination, Brewster’s focus shifts towards suggestion rather than adhering to realism.
Brewster finds that this approach has allowed her to create a fluid space that lies between representational and abstract, where the imagination can roam freely, beyond the limitations of time and space – moored to the past yet provoking questions about the future. A place which captures the essence of nature and presents it in a way that is both familiar and otherworldly – an enchanted garden where magical flowers bloom in delicate hues, with each petal a canvas for wonder and beauty.
Andrea Brewster
Andrea Brewster graduated cum laude with a BA in Sculpture from Pomona College and obtained her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in New Genres. In 1993 she received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for her works on paper. She has exhibited throughout the Bay Area, including solo shows at The Lab and Southern Exposure in San Francisco; and in group shows at Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, the Oakland Museum of California, New Langton Arts in San Francisco, and the Peninsula Museum in San Bruno, California. In 2017, her work was included in an international exhibition devoted to Tatting, a technique for handcrafting a particularly durable lace from a series of knots and loops at the Lacis Museum of Lace and Textiles in Berkeley. In 2020, her work was included in the Headford Lace Project show, “The Space Between,” in Galway, Ireland and in 2021 in the Bi-Annual International Fiber Arts X exhibition held in Sebastopol, California.
For more about Andrea Brewster