Authors

Sylvia Sullivan Villarreal works with patients in a medical setting. 
She lives with her husband, Jose Villarreal, in Houston, Texas.

Essayist Sylvia Sullivan Villarreal and artist Bonnie J. Brewer met at Boston College in 1968. 

They blend their creative energies in this collaboration to explore some of the common life experiences we all share, and moments, both heartbreaking and humorous, in their own long and rich friendship.

raveling through this life with the companionship of an intimate friend is a profound comfort. The opportunity to process all that life presents - the good and the not so good - with a trusted confidante makes the journey more colorful and satisfying. Such is the relationship between the authors of this collection of paintings and essays, who are now into the fourth decade of a rich and evolving friendship. Though separated by distance most of their adult lives, the bond they forged as young women has never weakened.

Read the Chronicle section "Faces in the Crowd" featuring Conversations in Color

Bonnie Brewer is an abstract artist, and a retired elementary school teacher. She resides with her cat, Diva, in their cottage not far from the bay on Cape Cod, MA.

In this collection they seek to blend their creative energies to produce a volume which they hope will stimulate, amuse, move, and even provoke. In it they take turns; one using the act of painting, the other crafting words to relate some of their experiences, both as friends, and as individual women growing into the fullness of their lives.

They invite their readers to join with them, to take a turn as they absorb these paintings and essays, in hopes that by examining deeply some of the experiences and emotions we all share, they may discover within these pages some consoling and common ground.