Brewster Brockmann, Boca de Tomatlan, Mexico
Brewster Brockmann, Boca de Tomatlan, Mexico, Graphite &/or Ink on Found Paper, Priced from USD$100 each (CAN $130 each) to USD $125 (CAN$160 each). International Shipping Available.
Brewster Brockmann stands out in many ways as an artist, but one of the most obvious is in the way he is equally proficient at creating paintings and sculptures, many of which have the feeling of ancient pieces in a museum of anthropology. The paintings offer the themes of nature one might expect from an artist living in a jungle setting at the foot of a mountain and next to a river emptying into the ocean 150 yards away. Titles of the works such as, “Niño con Cocodrilo/Child with Alligator,” “Tejon/Sloth” and “Papillon/Butterfly” reflect this interest that started as a boy but was later focused by a BA degree in biology with a minor in botany at Bennington College in Vermont. An MFA in ceramics at Michigan’s prestigious Cranbrook Institute followed, where Brewster was a teaching assistant. Upon graduation he was awarded a fellowship in the Kohler Corporation`s Artist in Industry Program, where he was able to use their facilities for fabricating bath tubs and fixtures to create primitive looking monkey figures in cast iron. Two of these are in the permanent collection of the Kohler Museum of Modern art. After returning to Mexico, Brewster taught workshops of graduate students who would come down from Cranbrook Institute and the Rhode Island School of Design to learn the classic techniques he practices, from digging his own clay and forming designs with a coils of the clay to firing it in a wood fired adobe kiln he made himself.
Although Brockmann continues with his familiar style, which might be called “stream of consciousness organic expressionism” for lack of a more traditional label, there also seems to be some new directions in style and approach in some of his current paintings on paper, wood and canvas. Brewster feels that putting more energy into his terracotta and bronze sculptures recently has actually helped his paintings in that they aid him in achieving a proper feeling of scale and inspire new sensibilities in the two dimensional work.
One might say that Brewster was born to be an artist, his American mother having met his Mexican father while both were art students at the Rhode Island School of Design. His mother, aunt, brother and a first cousin are currently professional painters and his sister is a photographer, with his father having become an architect in Guadalajara where Brewster was raised.