‘I think perhaps progress leaves behind a haunted landscape.’

Artist, poet, photographer Allan Brewer

Brewer displaying and talking about some of his photos from the series “Along Country Roads”.

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Stanza from a longer

work titled “June Now”.

George Allan Brewer has lived in New Brunswick, off and on, since 1972 and now calls Plaster Rock home. He has had a very diverse life experience which includes publishing four books of poetry, the latest of which, “A Book of Wandering Verse”, is available at Dusty Books on Main Street in downtown Woodstock. (Excerpt at right.)

A 1990 graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD University, Bachelor of Fine Arts), Brewer took a multi-media learning approach early on and tried his hand at sculpture, photography and print-making although painting seemed to get the best of him. 

“I struggled getting the basics right, but now I just relax and draw. And I approach photography like painting ─ 
I just look to see what might work.”

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Artist, poet, photographer. Where shall we start?
Well, after university I moved to Montreal. It was exciting and the art community was thriving. I was performing poetry ─ and making pretty intense drawings. My difficulty was finding my style. It was hard to focus. I didn’t show much but a friend called them “psychological”. But I’d come back to the Maritimes occasionally and became a bit of a gypsy, even living in a trailer in a hayfield one summer.

What about your four years at NSCAD?
An excellent experience, one of the best. But my grad show, that I called “Museum”, created a stir. It was an installation of floor-to-ceiling frottage on newsprint ─ rubbings of kitchen utensils done with charcoal ─ in the middle of which I placed my old coffee mug. Someone asked, “Is this art?” Good question.

Fiddlehead Moon

My first exposure to your art was actually a series of very fine woodcuts at the McCain Gallery. When did you begin that?
Actually, it was in Montreal in 1996 but I had done some similar work at NSCAD. It’s not difficult. You can even use off-cuts of plywood. My woodcuts and even my poetry contain a lot of “old religion” as well as pagan themes: the whole cycle of life, death, renewal and reverence for nature.

And now you’re more focussed on photography, so to speak?
When I was in Halifax I used a 35mm SLR camera and began to see photography as a means of artistic expression. Much later, I had a little Vivitar 3.8-pixel digital camera and started taking pictures again. Now I have a much more sophisticated camera and access to a ten-colour pigment printer which gives the prints a pastel-like quality and there’s a pleasing graininess to them because I print on card stock.

Where is that taking you?
I may get back to black and white film photography. Maybe even video─ lately, I’ve also been paying attention to certain sounds and tones. But right now I’m working on a series of colour photos called “Along Country Roads” which I hope will lead to another gallery show. (More about this project in the video below.)

The series asks: have we lost something of the character, charm and beauty that our countryside once held for residents and visitors alike?