There’s a special place in local artist Wendy Brewer’s heart—and home—for shells, driftwood, and other objects she finds washed ashore.
“I love the ocean and I love collecting things on the beach,” said Brewer, an avid beach walker who’s accumulated “an enormous amount of treasure” over the years.
She often incorporates her findings into her mixed-media projects. One of her recent pieces, playfully titled Beach Muse-ic, was a violin before she repurposed it into a sea-themed mosaic collage, currently on display at Gallery Los Olivos.
The venue’s latest duo show, Unity, is a pairing of Brewer’s mosaics and abstract paintings by local expressionist Christine Marie. Brewer said that Marie’s colorful works complement her own, and vice versa, in numerous ways. Some are less measurable, in an earthly sense, than others.
“Both our works have sort of spiritual qualities,” said Brewer, an ordained minister with a graduate degree in spiritual psychology.
While Brewer finds inspiration in poetry, meditation, and officiating weddings (a gig she said helps instill “a love-infused energy” in her artwork), the catalysts behind Marie’s abstract creations are often moments of observation, introspection, or stillness.
“We both have work that’s based on a celebration of the spiritual and human experience, and the manifestation and projection of love and unity in the world,” Marie said. “That’s how the name [Unity] came about, because we wanted to unite to help project more love and acceptance and kindness into the world.”
Similar to the way Brewer’s role as a wedding officiant inspires her art, Marie said her consulting work with SLO County’s Women’s Business Center often impacts her painting projects.
The Awakening, one of Marie’s pieces displayed in Unity, was inspired by her desire “to change and innovate my work within my art as well as how I help support small businesses and people in realizing their potential,” the painter explained.
“I’ve been on a personal journey for the last year, taking a really deep dive into kind of what’s next … what paths of exploration do I want to go on, what personal learning do I want to approach, and how do I want to grow as a person and with my small business consulting,” Marie said. “That story has been kind of coming to fruition, and that path of … transcending and awakening to that new journey is kind of what inspired this piece.”
Marie values abstract art as a way to express aspects of her personal journeys, while leaving ample room for viewers to bring their journeys to the table when interpreting her work.
“One of the most amazing things to me is just to stand back at a reception and hear people talk about the work and what it means to them,” Marie said. “Just hearing how they connect and engage and have these moments where their own journey and experiences inform the story of the work. … It’s deeply meaningful.
“As far as the abstract goes, it’s just always been kind of my natural language … the language that comes from within my soul somehow,” Marie added. “It seems to be what comes from deep in my soul. I don’t have another way to explain it. It’s just how everything comes out.”
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