Icon of the Buddha Tara, Western Style Painting

Mike Brewer is an American artist, living in Virginia, who paints people: portraits and figures in a classical realistic style. His oil paintings display sophisticated color palettes in which subtle, often muted colors are regularly paired with strong, vivid hues. His work is a combination of two influences. First is a French approach which was passed to Mike through the teachings of Richard Whitney whose own study was a lineage of Ives Gammell, William Paxton and Jean Leon Gerome. Mike’s other influence is an Italian approach which comes from an exposure to the teachings of Nelson Shanks and study at Studio Incamminati. Mike is driven by the believe that we as humans are constantly stealing glances of other people, always searching for the beautiful. His paintings capture that glimpse of beauty and allow us to look at it openly as long as we want.