Art Gallery of Alberta

Art Gallery of Alberta
2 Sir Winston Churchill Square
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
www.youraga.ca

Brenda Draney
.30-.30 2013
Oil on linen
121.9 x 152.4 cm
Art Gallery of Alberta Collection, purchased in 2014

By Courtesy of Art Gallery of Alberta! 

Click to enlarge!

The artwork .30-30 was part of Brenda Draney’s 2014 Suspend exhibition in the RBC New Works Gallery at the Art Gallery of Alberta.

In the exhibition Suspend Brenda Draney explores a large-scale narrative of her personal memories growing up in between the Northern Alberta community of Slave Lake and the city of Edmonton. Her paintings recall the impact of the devastating forest fires in Slave Lake in 2011, just as they share her more distant memories of growing up in Alberta.

Draney is known for her sparse style, of suspending paint in calculated gestures that allow the viewer to expand upon their own memories to complete the story. The artist demonstrates the materiality of painting, suspending the forms across the platform of the canvas itself. Through these vacant spaces between the paintings, Draney examines her relationship to her community, as the place where she grew up was engulfed by a forest fire, and the narratives that unfold as her family and community undergo the process of rebuilding.