While working as a court reporter in Brevard County in the late 1950s, Gray Brewer drove to Miami and back each weekend to be with his wife and children, who were there in school. Gray befriended the young African-American artist Harold Newton, who he often visited in Gifford as he drove south. This was an unusual thing for a Southern white man to do in those days, but he did it regularly and he often purchased paintings during these visits. As their friendship grew, so formed The Brewer Collection of paintings. Newton would visit Brewer at his waterfront home in Sharpes, where he would tack a board to a tree in the front yard and paint the Indian River. Newton, the progenitor of the group of landscape painters known as the Highwaymen, would become one of the few iconic Florida artists. Mr. Brewer acquired paintings from many core Highwaymen artists including Newton, Alfred Hair, Roy McLendon, and others. The Highwaymen were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2004, and in 2012, Bryan Brewer enlisted Lisa Stone Arts to represent the sales of the 46 paintings he inherited after his father's passing.