Unusual Beauty: Learning From Artist and Teacher David Brewster

Mon, 21 May 2007 13:04:32 +0000

By Kathryn Good-Schiff

If I had kids, this is one of those stories I'd tell them dozens of times, until they rolled their eyes: I had an art teacher and he changed my life. He turned my ideas of color inside out, and my ideas of subject matter upside down. He took my art history class on a field trip to a junkyard. He showed slides of graffiti he'd found inside abandoned buildings. He taught at my small private school for four years, long enough to shock some parents and just long enough to affect me forever.

The year was 1992, and we were studying Shakespeare. The assignment from my history teacher was for me to paint a copy of a drawing of an Elizabethan woman. She looked so stiff, nearly upholstered in her many layers of dress and petticoats. A starched collar seemed to hold up her narrow face. I sketched her outline faithfully, but when I needed to color her in, I went to the art teacher, Mr. Brewster, for help. I wanted my painting to be perfect.

!IMAGE142!"Well," he said, "you can add a little of this here..." His brush made a wavy line unlike anything in the original drawing. "And you can bring in some more color here. How about some green? There are always colors, even in shadows."

At 13 years old, I didn't want to be different. I certainly didn't see colors in shadows. I was scandalized by Mr. Brewster's transformation of my stiff woman into somebody with a little spirit. But he had planted a seed in my mind. There are colors everywhere. Even in shadows. Green shadows? I went home with this new secret, turning it over in my mind like a riddle.

The next year, in 9th grade, I took painting with Mr. Brewster. I'll never forget the morning he brought in fresh fish for us to paint. He said he'd seen them at the market in South Philadelphia, said they were just too silver and wonderful for him to leave them there to be eaten. He tore open the white paper package and threw the fish on an old, dusty plate. He pulled a large knife from out of nowhere and stuck it in one of the fish, perpendicular to the plate. We were all horrified, yet fascinated by the passion that let him see beauty even in the grotesque.

I didn't know it at the time, but finding beauty in unusual places was David Brewster's career in the 1990s. His paintings from that period are scenes of urban decay done in bright colors, reminiscent of Van Gogh's most exuberant landscapes. When, as a senior in high school, I went to see one of his gallery shows, I saw he had even painted on the hood of a car.

!IMAGE143!I was reacquainted with David a year ago at the Paradise City Arts Festival in Northampton, MA, where he was showing new work. His current subjects are more rural, even pastoral. He often depicts fields, trees, and Colonial farmhouses, yet he also demonstrates affinity for an old tractor or a dead rooster. His paintings still thrill me with unexpected colors and shock me with vertiginous composition. Looking at some of these landscapes, I feel that the sky is about to fall. It is a good kind of shock: the kind I need in order to be reminded to look again at ordinary objects, to look for the colors in shadows, to see the world anew.

To view David Brewster's work, visit http://www.davidbrewsterfineart.com/.

David Brewster's work is included in the 2007 Annual Landscape Invitational at William Baczek Fine Arts at 36 Main Street in Northampton, Massachusetts. The group exhibition runs from May 3 - June 3, 2007.

He will be showing again at Paradise City Arts Festival in Northampton, MA, May 26-28. Details at Paradise City Arts

Photos courtesy of Paradise City Arts Festival/David Brewster.
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Kathryn Good-Schiff studied visual art and world literature at Barnard College before transferring to Hampshire College, where she earned her BA in environmental studies and creative writing. Her poetry has appeared in Kalliope, Lotus.zine, SNReview, Pank, and Drive By Poets. She lives in Hadley, Massachusetts, frequents the Smith College Museum of Art, and can often be found gazing at the sky. Visit her blog.