About Me
John Brewer is an artist based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and a student at Kalamazoo College. His work blends the worlds of fine art, commercial illustration, and conceptual art to see what illustration might look like in a gallery context.
My recent work springs from a very pivotal time. After my Dad passed away near the end of 2025, I started to question everything, 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 the certainty people have in all things, as each day I felt less and less certain about everything.
This had an immediate impact on my work, and now, I create with the first intention of challenging certainty. My recent work has done this by placing larger-than-life ideas in situations of contrast, putting them right next to eachother so the viewer could see how similar and different they really are, and question their own certainties. Not in an effort to make people’s days worse, but to introduce an essential level of questioning to the viewer’s perspective, so hopefully, they can move past certainty, and get closer to the truth.
For me, illustration has been the best medium for the emotional subjects of my work, as there’s something about close work of illustration that creates an intimate experience for the viewer. Not to mention illustration’s rich history as a commercial art form, as its long history of commercial motifs and symbols should make it a treasure trove for fine artists. However, despite illustration’s unique capabilities, the medium goes largely untapped today in comparison to other mediums.