David Brewster

David Brewster				Main Gallery			January 5 - January 30, 2008

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	DAVID BREWSTER - IRREPRESSIBLE STORM Sometime during the Romantic epoch, the idea of the ‘all prima’ sketch began to take on a special value for artists. It was no longer regarded as being simply a preparatory stage towards the creation of a finished painting, but as something that had special aesthetic value in itself. What fascinated spectators was the idea that you could actual witness the fluctuations of the creative impulse, as this recorded itself through the movements of the artist’s hand as he applied paint to a surface. The fascination with sketches was in some ways selective – the ‘purest’ sketches were of landscape, made directly in the presence of the motif. The cult of the sketch led more or less directly to the emergence of the Impressionist Movement and – after that, following the lapse of a substantial interval, which was filled with other, quite different, artistic endeavors, to the appearance of the Abstract Impressionist Movement in the United States. In certain major Abstract Expressionist works, for example Willem de Kooning’s Bolton Landing [1957] and Door to the River [1960], the references to Romantic landscape painting of the early 19th century are extremely clear. However, three things differentiate them from these predecessors. One is a deliberate vagueness concerning topographical reference – these paintings are ‘inspired by’ but not ‘views of’. Another is the ambitious scale. And a third is the fact that these paintings were obviously not produced in front of the motif, but as recollections, in the studio. David Brewster has been inspired by the idea that it is possible, in certain conditions, and certainly with heroic effort, to produce huge ‘all prima’ paintings of recognizable places that retain all the spontaneity and freshness of response of a Romantic sketch, and which, like sketches produced by artists otherwise as different from one another as Constable and the young Corot, have clearly been made in the very presence of what is depicted. Probably only an American artist, inspired by the huge scale and kinetic energy of many American landscape views, could have nurtured an idea of this sort. There has always been an element of competitiveness in American art. American artists, like American craftspeople, often strive to discover new technical challenges. If you try to tell them that something is impossible, their impulse is to try to prove to you that you are wrong. That is clearly the case here. Brewster glories in the fact that he can carry paintings through to completion that would defeat any colleague. Yet these are not just displays of virtuosity. The paintings are expressions of visceral response to the American outdoors – to the continuous flows of light, air and moisture that the painter encounters as he creates the painting. He opens himself to nature and is as much dominated as he is dominant. These paintings are a record one man’s exhilarated dialogue the natural world, and his spontaneous record of his own presence within it. They do not freeze a moment, but instead speak of a state of continuous psychic evolution. This consonance with the self is essentially what all Romantic artists look for. David Brewster seems to have found it in full measure. Edward Lucie-Smith Edward Lucie-Smith is best known as a writer of books on contemporary art. His titles include Movements in Art Since 1945, Art Today and Art Tomorrow. He is also an exhibition curator, poet and internationally exhibited photographer.