Rebecca Brewer

Rebecca Brewer, who was born in Tokyo in 1983 and currently lives and works in Vancouver, employs the techniques of painterly abstraction to delve into the overlooked and undervalued aspects of both the human and natural realms. Using oil on wood as her primary medium, she has also produced large-scale felted tapestries and pigmented resin compositions. Her artistic approach creates an expressionistic and dynamic tension between representation and abstraction that challenges our assumptions regarding the process and subjects of her work, utilizing material specificities and mechanisms of perception. Through a dissonant palette and unique mark-making, she explores the potential of chance elements, semiotics, and the surreal dream space to examine the connection between our inner states and the exterior world.

Drawing on a wide range of visual histories, psychoanalytic archetypes, medieval hagiography, and artificial intelligence, Brewer's work investigates how the subconscious world is constructed and conveyed. She references various techniques for subconscious exploration, including dream interpretation, tarot reading, Italian sottobosco painting, and machine learning semantic webs, to create surreal arrangements that engage the viewer in a psychedelic experience.

Brewer earned an MFA from Bard College in 2013 and a BFA from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2007. She has had solo exhibitions at Catriona Jeffries (2023), Frye Art Museum in Seattle (2020), Oakville Galleries in Canada (with Rochelle Goldberg, 2019), Catriona Jeffries in Vancouver (2014, 2016), and Exercise in Vancouver (2012). Her work has also been included in group exhibitions at Oakville Galleries in Canada (2018), Vancouver Art Gallery (2016), The Audain Gallery at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver (2016), Marcelle Alix in Paris (2014), and Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff (2013). Brewer was the recipient of the 2011 RBC Canadian Painting Competition.