Artist Lecture: Brenda Draney

Drawing from complex memories and an evolving sense of identity, Brenda Draney (b. 1976, member of Sawridge First Nation, Treaty 8) paints narrative canvases marked by economical brushstrokes and expanses of white space. In Drink from the river, her first solo exhibition in the United States, Draney portrays scenes of daily life, along with those of singular events, that she leaves open-ended or unspecified. The cumulative portrait that emerges references a collective self that encompasses not only her own experience but that of past generations and current community members. Recurring and recognizable motifs of specific figures, pieces of furniture, or architectural features, alongside more generalized joyful or traumatic encounters leave Draney’s oeuvre open to association and
to individual connection.