About Me
My name is John Brewer, and I’m a Grand Rapids-based conceptual illustrator who’s attending Kalamazoo College for my junior year. Illustration is often seen as a commercial medium, but my personal work asks what that medium would look like in a fine art context.
My recent work springs from a very important time in my life. My Dad passed away near the end of 2025, and after that I started to question everything. I started asking questions like “What do I want out of life?” “Who do I want to surround myself with?” and “What is the good life really?” I began to feel increasingly frustrated by how certain some of the people around me seemed, as each day I felt less and less certain about everything.
Needless to say, this completely reshaped my work. I began placing these larger-than-life ideas in situations of contrast, putting them right next to eachother so the viewer can see how similar and different they really are, and question their own certainties. But I don’t do this just so I can make people’s days worse, I want to introduce an essential level of questioning to the viewer’s perspective, so hopefully, they can take one step closer to the truth.
For me, illustration has been the best medium for these concepts I’m working with; I think there’s something about the detailed, close work of illustration that makes it a more intimate experience for the viewer. I’m also very interested in illustration’s history as a commercial art form; it has such a long history of commercial motifs and symbols that go largely untapped because of the societal preference for other mediums.