James Brewer was born in Washington, D.C. in 1954. He attended Tufts University in Boston, taking art classes offered through the School of The Museum of Fine Arts.

He returned to Virginia to attend the University of Virginia School of Medicine and has lived with his wife in beautiful Nelson County for more than 20 years, painting in a studio surrounded by a ring of Blue Ridge foothills.

The artist works in oils on both canvas and paper, and employs abstract as well as representational approaches. Influences include especially the art of Willem deKooning and of Henri Matisse.

“My approach is an inelegant process of applying paint and then making ‘corrections’, without attempting to entirely hide them. Rather, the strokes, wipes and scrapes leave some record of the painting process itself; pentimenti they are called.”