Born in Baltimore in 1960, David Brewster earned his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 1988, and has since been invited to paint, lecture, and exhibit throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. His work is represented in private and museum collections including the Berman Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, The Orton Foundation, Princeton University Art Museum, the Pennsylvania State Museum, the Wharton School of Business, the W.P. Carey School of Business at Johns Hopkins University, Woodmere Art Museum, Robert Hull Fleming Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bangkok, Thailand. He has received numerous awards including grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Taconic Berkshire Foundation, as well as fellowships at the Ballingen Arts and Klots foundations.
In October 2017, the Maryland Historical Society opened "Structure and Perspective," in which David Brewster was commissioned to create a dynamic suite of paintings featuring new works juxtaposed with Society's historical collections. Working with museum staff, Brewster mined the vast resources at MdHS as a source of inspiration for the contemporary topics his paintings interpreted: Baltimore uprising, immigration, trans visibility/LGBT rights, global warming, degrading infrastructure, and the U.S.'s deep political divide.
