Claire Brewster’s artwork is an experiment of sorts—an exploration of mediums and techniques such as collage, painting, pouring, stippling, and layering paint on paper or card. The result is a colorful, rather delightful, sort of mess.
“I am always testing the materials, colors, and textures to act beyond what I expect and can control,” Brewster relayed in a piece she wrote for Create Magazine. “I encourage the paint to do things it’s not supposed to do to create happy accidents.”
Centered around images of women she finds and collects from glossy magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Tatler, these images are distorted until they can no longer be recognized. Taken out from their original context, they act as a sort of ghostly, uncanny, presence that lingers throughout her work.
According to Brewster, these “magazine paintings” aim to liberate and transform the figures she collects, in order to create ethereal yet provocative works that question notions of identity and how women are perceived. “My aim is to test the limits of the paper and paint,” she further explained. “I am looking for reactions between the paint and the paper and how one layer of paint is impacted by the preceding layers.”
With her work attracting clients like Vogue, World of Interiors, and Marie-Claire Maison, and exhibited widely, it’s clear that Brewster’s artworks are more than just “happy accidents.”
