Reflections
"What remains when the body is stripped of its soul?"
— Simone Brewster
Created during the COVID-19 lockdown, Reflections is a series of Indian ink drawings on paper that marks the beginning of Brewster's painting practice. Executed in stark black ink, the works reduce the female form to its most essential elements, exploring the body through abstraction, gesture and absence.
Produced in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, the drawings emerged from a profound sense of grief, frustration and helplessness. Rather than responding through direct representation, Brewster turned to the symbolic language of the body itself. These figures are stripped back, fragmented and often anonymous, asking what remains when identity is repeatedly reduced to appearance, projection or stereotype.
Working only with black ink on white paper, the series established many of the questions that continue to shape Brewster's practice: the abstraction of the female body, the relationship between external representation and inner experience, and the search for an emotional landscape that exists beyond physical form.
Seen now, Reflections represents both a personal response to a particular moment in history and the foundation of a visual language that would later evolve into the richly layered paintings of Changing Tides and Imperfect.
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![Painting on white paper of bodies piled on top of one another depicted in black ink by Simone Brewster]()
Pile 01
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![Painting by Simone Brewster on white paper with text painted in black ink and a fragmented figure painted also in black ink around the text]()
No Protest
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![A black ink painting on white paper depicting a face using simple lines]()
Gaze 02
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![A black ink painting on white paper depicting a face using simple lines A black ink painting on white paper depicting a face using simple lines A black ink painting on white paper depicting a face using simple lines]()
Gaze 01
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![A painted of an abstracted and fragmented female body depicted in black ink on white paper by Simone Brewster]()
Assemblage 02
Let’s Work Together
For commissions, exhibitions, acquisitions, speaking engagements or collaborations, the studio welcomes enquiries.