“I am only here for the art,” reads Claire Brewster’s Instagram bio—a statement that can be read both literally and metaphorically. A master of cut-up paintings and collages, her spelled out aim is to test the limits of the paper and paint.
“I am looking for reactions between the paint and the paper and how one layer of paint is impacted by the preceding layers,” she further explained in a piece published on Create Magazine.
According to Brewster, each of her pieces begins with the tantalizingly forbidden act of cutting up maps, books, and magazines. These magazines include fashion publications like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, from which she cuts out pictures of women and models. Removing these women from their original context, her paintings usually begin with these images, upon which she layers or pours paint.
Brewster notes, that with such process of creating there is often buckling, cracking, and distortions in colors, nut such unpredictability is especially thrilling to her. “I am always testing the materials, colors, and textures to act beyond what I expect and can control,” she says. “I encourage the paint to do things it’s not supposed to do to create happy accidents.”
According to her, her magazine paintings aim to liberate and transform the women figures she cuts out beyond recognition. Through these transformations, she explores questions of identity and how women are perceived and perceive themselves. The end result is, unsurprisingly, thought-provoking as it is striking. Take a look for yourself.
