Immersive and sensual, the richly floral images of Gary Brewer’s “Voluptuous Charm of the Monumental Image” is a kaleidoscope of color and form.

These are works bursting with life, subtly O’Keefe-like—though still uniquely Brewer—evoking the mysteries of nature, the cosmos and the female body with a gentle yet powerful sensuality. In both paintings and lusciously glazed sculptural form, the artist’s use of color draws the viewer in, while his graceful use of line and shape compel deeper investigation. There is an intricacy both in his subjects and in his work, creating the sense that each image is alive, and “growing.”

In the large-scale oil work The Heart of the Heart, violet and lavender leap from the canvas, taking us to the most intimate part of this interstellar orchid. In a smaller watercolor painting, Shimmering Origins, gold, taupe and green predominate an intense interior orchid view. With a natural floral shape that evokes eroticism, each of Brewer’s extreme orchid close-ups are astonishingly personal. The oil piece Mystic Floral adds drops of water to these taken-from-life works, creating small translucent orbs floating outward from sensitive petals. In each of these and many other paintings, the viewer experiences the sense of being allowed a special privilege, seeing the heart of these floral beings.

Gary Brewer, Earth Sea Memory, 2022. Courtesy of Wonzimer Gallery.

Some of the watercolor works are less intensely intimate in scale. In Andalusian Sea, Brewer creates less microscopic views of his lustrous orchids, while sea anemones float by branches of coral. The deep pink to purple background offers a florid, liquid universe, one both rooted in our world and residing in another entirely.

While Brewer’s paintings are vividly floral in form, the ceramic sculptures resemble many natural life forms at once: parts of flowers, intimate explorations of pods and seeds ready to sprout, and mysterious sea creatures. In Morphic Resonance, a lapis-lazuli blue is topped with a lush spill of white, as if snow or sea foam dusted this flora. Lyrical Geology is almost animal-like in form, recalling a sea horse, snail, or perhaps an interplanetary horse’s head. Earth Sea Memory is clearly a work taken from the sea, coral-like in its deep gem blue and soft salmon encrusted with patterned white.

Whether created in oil or watercolor or in ceramic, Brewer’s work here is hypnotically lovely.