ARTIST'S STATEMENT: Gary Brewer

Ocean Flowers is my most recent body of work, exploring the fanciful and eccentric in nature. I am drawn to, ‘and draw’ from life forms that are both strange and beautiful, finding in them a metaphor for our curious place in the universe.This series of paintingsexamine myriad variations of sea life; suspending them without gravity, freely moving in a limitless space infused with light.

Each life form conveys its own particular identity. The anemone is simultaneously seductive and menacing. Every child is compelled to touch its erotic core, recoiling in fright when the tentacles try to grab hold. The organic biomorphic character of sponges and corals make reference to mid-century modern design. These associations become part of a language told in paint and image, articulated in a field of hybridized space.

Many of the titles in this show are taken from Gaston Bachelard’s book The Poetics of Space. Titles such as Privileged Forms and Nature that Imagines are from a chapter on shells that describes how the extraordinary complexity of their form and beauty convey a sense of intention; as if “nature that imagines” is the key behind these “privileged forms”.