Print works (From Bournemouth Echo)

Print works

11:24am Monday 4th February 2008

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MARTYN Brewster stands in his Bournemouth studio, bathed in a shaft of winter sunshine streaming through the window. Around him are paintings and prints; their vibrant, saturated colours glowing with compelling luminosity in this natural spotlight.

It's perhaps the perfect setting to talk about his work. The studio, at the bottom of Brewster's garden, is where he has produced a stunning body of work for the best part of two decades.

It was the presence of this workspace, just yards from the back door of the property he was viewing, that convinced Brewster to buy his house in the backstreets of Southbourne back in the late 1980s.

Not only was it exactly what he'd been looking for but, by a stroke of luck, it proved remarkably easy to snap up. Other prospective buyers had been put off by its one-time use as a chapel of rest and coffin-making workshop.

For Brewster, who was moving from London to the coast, it would prove the perfect base from which to work on his instantly recognisable paintings and silkscreen monoprints.

He's quite proud of his studio's rather interesting history. "Look, there's still some stained glass in the windows," he says. Beneath those windows lies his print-making space. Up a flight of wooden steps is his painting studio. Both, though battered, scuffed and paint-spattered, are painstakingly organised.

Such preparation has helped pay dividends.

Praised both nationally and internationally, his works are, with occasional exceptions, brilliantly colourful abstracts. Despite a primary palette in which red, yellow and blue (especially blue) feature again and again, they show extraordinary subtlety and maturity.

For Brewster's art may utilise what for many are the colours of the playroom, but make no mistake, they are seriously grown-up works. They're exhibited worldwide, lauded by critics and prized by collectors. Many of his larger paintings sell for five-figure sums.

Whether big and bold, or on a smaller scale, Brewster's works invariably show an intuitive painterly intelligence which has been honed by years of study, practice and application into something extraordinary and unique.

A loner at art college, he started this journey, which has ignored fashion and trend, when still in his early 20s. Now in his mid 50s, he is regarded as one of the most extraordinary talents of his generation.

Although inspired by landscape and nature - it is the English tradition of Constable and Turner that lies at the root of Brewster's artistic quest - his paintings tend to have more obvious visual links with abstract expressionism.

As a printmaker, however, he has moved into another realm. Analysing Brewster's work is no easy task. It really does speak for itself.

This point is made far more eloquently than I could put it in an exceptional new book called simply Martyn Brewster Prints 1975 - 2007. Apart from stunning reproductions, this high-quality publication contains insightful essays by artist, musician and writer Vivienne Light, and the former director of Bournemouth's Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Simon Olding.

Light believes Brewster's works to be "irreducible" saying: "They stand for themselves they possess a rhythmic, physical life of their own."

Olding likens them to the mood and sound of improvised jazz, and speaks of their "material warmth" and "deep romantic sensibility". They are both spot on. Martyn Brewster's art is poetic, evocative and, though utterly unique, seems instantly recognisable.

Brewster himself is delighted with the book, designed by his brother Simon. After months of painstaking work alongside specialist publishers Canterton Books, he says he couldn't be more pleased with the quality of reproduction, and feels the publication provides a telling overview of the development of his printmaking over the past three decades.

"It's interesting to see the things you didn't necessarily notice at the time. The twists, the turns, where things have moved on, the good decisions and some of the experiments that didn't work."

Examining the colour plates, he reminds me once again of where his work has come from. "Landscape, nature and living by the sea," he says decisively. "The coastline and places like the New Forest provoke a strong emotional response."

He gestured towards his paintings and prints. "In a very subtle way it's all there."

• Martyn Brewster Prints 1975-2007 was launched last month at the London Art Fair in Islington. There will be a major retrospective exhibition of Brewster's print work at the Jill George Gallery in London's Soho in April. Meanwhile, in March he will be exhibiting alongside the potter Chris Carter at Bettles Gallery in Ringwood.

• For information about Martyn Brewster: Prints 1975 - 2007 by Vivienne Light and Simon Olding, go to the links below.

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