Actor Pierce Brosnan holds his first solo art exhibition fulfilling a 30-year-long dream

Pierce Brosnan, the star of "Goldeneye," has spent many successful decades as an actor playing suave, sophisticated characters, but there's one role he's kept mostly to himself until now: fine artist. He credits his relatively private creative path to the inspiration and support of his close-knit family. A few days before his 70th birthday on May 16, the Irish actor revealed a very different creative side at the debut solo exhibition of his artwork, "So Many Dreams," a curated collection of paintings, sketches, silkscreens and other creations he made over a 36-year period. According to PEOPLE, the actor has long wanted to explore artistic expression on canvas, and the work seems as delightful as his art on screen.

"It's retrospective," Brosnan said of the exhibition, which was at a pop-up art gallery on Los Angeles' trendy La Brea Boulevard till May 21. "It started in '87, so it's quite a long journey of painting and putting them in storage and giving them away. And the evolution has become more mature and more necessary in my life as I get older — and my birthday of 70 years on the planet is just in spitting distance, as it were, so we decided to have the show to put it all together.," he explained. The actor's wife of 22 years, Keely Shaye Brosnan, and their eldest son, Dylan Brosnan, were on hand to support his gallery debut, which highlights Brosnan's distinctively bright and bold color palettes in everything from representational works—including portraits of Bob Dylan, Pablo Picasso and Brosnan himself—to imaginative abstract expressions.

Keely even took pride in displaying some of her favorite works, including one that was a Valentine's Day gift from her husband. Brosnan admitted that he's learned to trust Keely's design sense when he hits an artistic snag while working in their garage studio. "Oh, my wife is quite strong with her input, and she has spoken many times—and she's right though, which is really annoying!" he said, laughing. "It's annoying when she says it, and then it's annoying that I have to walk away and go, 'She's right. Yes, that needs to be bluer, or 'That just doesn't make sense.'"

Even the velvet jacket he wore to the reception was at Keely's suggestion, he confessed. "My wife said 'Wear it,'" he shared. His sons have taken after him. "Our [youngest] son Paris is a very bold, strong, powerful painter in the making," Brosnan shared. "We paint together and he's very strong. We'll have a show at some point, that's the plan." Dylan also worked on a short film about his father's work as an artist, which is on display at the exhibition. "My tall handsome boy over there, he's a documentary filmmaker and so he made it with Thom Zimny," Brosnan disclosed. "You'll see the garage if you wish to see the garage!" 

Brosnan takes painting as seriously as he does acting. "They're all about the performance of expressing the inner life of a character," he explained. "Within the endeavor of a painter, for me, does it have some emotion for me doing of it, in the making of painting a chair or to try and to try and capture Bob Dylan, to do something attractive? This is expressing the inner life of a man wanting to be a painter, endeavoring to be an artist, to be a painter—someone who has the desire and the want and the need to paint."

Adding that he hopes his artistic side will become more prominent, he said: "This is a transitional moment in the work. As I've stored so much of it, I have to now let it go if I'm going to move on, if I'm going to pursue the practice of being a painter, an artist." Notable attendees during the event included Kelly Clarkson (who Brosnan invited earlier in the week while appearing as a guest on her syndicated chat show), Adam Devine and wife Chloe Bridges (DeVine co-stars opposite Brosnan in the upcoming Netflix film The Out-Laws), Jane Seymour, socialite Linda Thompson, film producer Lawrence Bender and saxophonist Kenny G.

Brosnan also assured that he will not be leaving Hollywood anytime soon. Referring to his recent appearance as Doctor Fate in the superhero film "Black Adam" and future film projects, he said, "Does acting still loom larger in my life? I hope so. I think there's employment for 70-year-old Irishman or Irish Americans. Who knows? I've got a lot of work. I've got things to do here, God willing."

Brosnan added that he's excited to have made his distant dream of artistic success a reality. "It's deeply meaningful to me, to Pierce the 17-year-old, to the young man that I was who was searching for creative life, artistic life, always wished it, wanted it, and I've got it and I've enjoyed it as an artist, as an actor, as a performer, as someone who entertains," he said. "And now to show the work of a painter, a man who I think has some sense of what he's doing and joy of what he's doing, and has the courage to put it up on the walls and come and see the work, to show oneself – [It's] very vulnerable. Very, very raw." We hope to see more aesthetic exhibits from his end soon.