| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Calgary artist Lisa Brawn creates woodcuts that use portraiture and images, primarily from popular culture, to reflect inspirations she finds in gender archetypes, propaganda and everyday camp and nostalgia. Her woodcuts are art in and of themselves, rather than a tool for used for creating prints. She uses walnut and cherry wood and salvaged century-old Douglas fir from the restoration of the historic Alberta and Hull Blocks. The subjects of her portraiture have included Hollywood heroes and femme fatales, civil servants, cowboys and gangsters, Queen Elizabeth, and icons of Canadian history and popular culture, be they prime ministers, writers, musicians, astronauts, scientists, athletes or CBC personalities. She actively exhibits her works around Calgary and throughout Canada and the US.
Brawn has been involved in or instigated several Calgary arts initiatives and curatorial projects, many of which involve staging events and exhibits in unconventional spaces.
Brawn was introduced to woodcuts as a medium by printmakers at the Alberta College of Art and Design where she studied fine arts, majoring in drawing. She has also trained in video production and multimedia. In 2009, her images where featured on a series of 160 banners displayed on seven Calgary bridges through the City of Calgary’s Centre City Banner Program. She co-curates a window gallery on 17th Avenue known as La Fenêtre.
Compiled 2014 |