Ethan S. Brewerton

www.EthanSBrewerton.com | EthanSBrewerton@gmail.com

Education

Lyme Academy College of Fine Art – BFA – 2011

Biography

Ethan S. Brewerton is a Connecticut Artist and Illustrator focusing on collaboration and stream of consciousness drawing.  His style often involves biomechanical forms best described as maximalism, whether that’s on canvas, paper, fabric, or on a screen.

In 2021, Ethan entered the burgeoning NFT world, launching his brand Mecha Chaotic. More than just a collection, Mecha Chaotic is a living universe where Ethan focuses on a radical form of collaboration: creating monsters in real-time with his audience.  Participants gain points while they watch, then use those points to redeem parts that he then has to add immediately to the creation in progress. Through this process, he has fostered a vibrant community and collaborated with major projects and personalities in the space.

His growing influence and unique vision led to a career milestone: His work was featured in the gallery at the 2024 Beeple Digital Art DeathMatch in Charleston, South Carolina.

Please stay

Looking out into the night sky, I can never keep my eye trained on a single star. The longer and harder I focus, the more it fades away. Much like stars, my memories ebb and flow in my mind. The harder I focus, the less dimensionality I seem to recall.

This work comes from the frustration of how my memories form, sharpen, and blur in my mind. By coalescing an image through fragments, ink, paint, and other tools, I began to build an ephemeral language.

My art is about my life. I try to be as busy as possible and work as quickly as I can without judging what happens on the canvas or in a sculpture until it’s done. Even then, I enjoy the chance occurrences that exist in that chaos and want to share them with you. When someone looks at my work, I hope they experience it first and don’t read into what is written as an explanation of what is supposed to happen. Anything happens.

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“You have found deliverance from death. It came from your own seeking, on your own path, through thinking, through meditation, through knowledge, through illumination. It did not come through a teaching! And—this is my thought, O Sublime One— no one is granted deliverance through a teaching! You cannot, O Venerable One, impart to anyone, tell anyone in words and through teachings what happened to you in the hour of your illumination. The Teaching of the illuminated Buddha contains a great deal, it teaches many how to live righteously, avoid evil. But there is one thing that the so clear, so venerable Teaching does not contain: it does not contain the secret of what the Sublime One himself has experienced, he alone among hundreds of thousands. That is what I thought and realized when I heard the Teaching. That is why I am resuming my wandering—not to seek a different, a better teaching, for I know that there is none; but to leave all teachings and all teachers and to reach my goal alone or die. Yet I will often think back to this day, O Sublime One, and to this hour when my eyes beheld a saint.”

Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse

Artist Statement – Arnethia (née) Douglass

My work is a reflection of lived experience—shaped by my environment, cultural heritage, and a deep curiosity about the world around me. As an interdisciplinary artist, I draw upon the rhythms of music and dance, the textures of raffia and ink, and the symbolism of folklore and basketry to create visual narratives that speak to identity, memory, and transformation.

Inspiration flows from a wide spectrum of sources: the geometry of shapes and patterns, the social currents of cultural norms, and pressing global issues such as climate change and environmental injustice. I am particularly driven by the disparities faced by marginalized communities—especially those with limited access to creative resources—and the power of art to give voice where silence has prevailed.

My artistic practice embraces abstraction as a means to offer new perspectives. Each piece invites the viewer into a layered conversation about history, spirituality, resilience, and the potential for change. I see art as a form of activism, healing, and connection—an opportunity to be a beacon in the community, illuminating the unseen and celebrating the overlooked.

Through my work, I aim to inspire others to reflect, reimagine, and reengage with the world around them—one story, one shape, one stroke at a time.

Ethan Frederick Newman (b. Torrington, CT 1990) is known for his engaging abstract expressionist oil paintings and collages. An accomplished musician from an early age, he employs a swift and spontaneous approach to painting, imbuing his work with improvisational flair. Newman earned his BFA from Hartford Art School in 2018, where his talent was acknowledged through various scholarships and grants-most notably the prestigious Anna Ball Pierce Scholarship. He has exhibited solo at Five Points Gallery, Fred Giampietro Gallery, and Serendipity Gallery, along with numerous group exhibitions at esteemed venues such as Silvermine Gallery, Joseloff Gallery, and Washington Art Association Gallery. His artistic prowess has earned him multiple accolades, including the Rudolph F. Zallinger Excellence in Painting Prize from the University of Hartford, and a first-place win in the Five Points Juried Biennial in 2017. His paintings reside in numerous collections internationally.

Looking at a cross-section of skin, I began to think about the layer as a form to describe abstract relationships. For example- my thoughts travel from my fingertips to the keyboard, to the screen, through layers of time and code and electricity, to the layer of the page you read–a passage of light falling onto the layer of your retina, and on. I am curious about the layer as a form that can filter, protect, divide, and connect.

I create sculptural installation work using thin layers of paper that ranges in scale from small wall relief to architectural enclosures. I dye large tissue-thin semi-transparent paper that I then layer, and carefully burn through the layers, using the ember from a stick of incense.

The burning of the paper is a permanent change and cannot be undone—a kind of death. However, as it creates openings in the paper, it allows the passage of air. The paper moves, appearing to breathe—life. Here lies a paradox I keep returning to: the relationship between life and death, love and loss. I create in a process of improvisation, making small discoveries as I listen to the materials and changes that occur. In this way, the work is an engagement with the mystery of being.

Recently I have also begun to create ephemeral sculptures with incense, installed as miniature sculpture garden landscapes. Looking at incense ritual, especially its use as a clock, I have been inspired to develop sculptures exploring the time in spatial forms, as well as considering scent as a portal to the past as a memory activator.

My body of work focuses on identity and transformation: the perception of who we are and how it changes from person to person. I find inspiration for my art-making through activism and counterculture. In my practice, I employ traditional mediums such as painting, printmaking, and book arts as vehicles for the exploration of self-image and presentation through the different lenses of personhood and culture, as well as the impact our upbringings, interpersonal relationships, and the environment have on how we navigate an impermanent, ever-changing world.

My work begins with noticing — cultivating a sensitivity to gray areas and to the spaces where

meaning resists resolution. I work with an alphabet of conceptual frameworks: recurring forms,

materials, and gestures that act as building blocks. Each project becomes a way of arranging

these into new structures, where something unexpected can emerge through proximity, rhythm,

and friction.

I’m drawn to the moment when understanding slips, when getting closer to something makes it

harder to describe. I’m interested in the tension between surface and depth, presence and

absence, what’s felt and what’s known. My work often lives in the space where sensation

outpaces language, where perception becomes entangled with memory, projection, or doubt.

Rather than seeking resolution, I explore what unfolds when frameworks are recontextualized or

let loose. Meaning is not fixed, but something that arises — provisional, shifting, and always

shaped by context. I’m interested in what remains, what vanishes, and what hovers just at the

edge of articulation.

Working in sterling silver, I forge individual chain links by hand and saw floral motifs with improvised precision. My practice is shaped by process, with unpredictability serving as a source of creative momentum. This process is slow, deliberate, and often scattered, marked by pauses and trials. A single piece may take months, not due to complexity alone, but because I let intuition and time guide me more than rigid planning. Close inspection of my work reveals marks left by my hammer and saw frame — subtle scratches and imperfections that I embrace as evidence of the hand at work. I view these unintentional remnants not so much as flaws, but as traces of the labor and presence behind the piece. There is a quiet honesty in them, an essence of rough beauty. At times, I incorporate an intimate gesture in my work: a secret detail resting close to the skin, hidden from public view. My work is created to be worn, not confined; its true life begins on the body. My jewelry carries both delicacy and grit, fragility and endurance — a reflection of the process I deeply value.