| ARTIST BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: | Brenda Draney is Cree from Sawridge First Nation, Treaty 8, with a strong connection to Slave Lake. Draney draws inspiration from her personal stories, painting memories and recollections from her life. She explores complicated dynamics and relationships in her work, rooted in the places she has lived and the communities that have claimed her.
Draney’s paintings obscure any definitive detail, and she leaves her canvases blank and sparse, representative of just how vague and uncertain memories become in the distance of time. For Draney, the blank spaces in her canvas act as doorways for viewers to enter the work on their own terms, to fill the spaces with their own stories and recollections. She uses an intuitive yet conservative amount of gestural brush strokes in her work, revealing just enough information for the compositions to feel familiar.
Brenda holds a BA in English and a BFA in Painting from the University of Alberta, and an MA from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She won the 2009 RBC Painting Competition, and was short-listed for the 2016 Sobey Art Award. Her work has been acquired by institutions and private collectors including the National Gallery of Canada, the Embassy of Canada Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Alberta, and the Sobey Collection. She lives and works in Edmonton, Alberta.
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