Studio Art Lecture in Contemporary Art: "Out of the Woods"

Artist Talk

Out of the Woods highlights the artist’s distinctive approach to memory, perception, and the unseen forces that shape human relationships. Draney’s paintings unfold in the tension between what is depicted and what is deliberately left blank: figures and objects appear within broad fields of untouched canvas, creating visual spaces where uncertainty, omission, and emotional residue take shape. Central to this series is the figure of the Witiko from Cree folklore—not as a distant monster, but as a metaphor for how empathy, care, and connection can erode over time, sometimes within those closest to us. Everyday motifs—a blanket, a mattress, a ferry—become quiet stages where trauma and transformation linger. In Breach (2025), a seemingly stable ferry is revealed to be sinking, reflecting Draney’s interest in the dissonance between surface calm and underlying collapse.

Throughout this work, Draney transforms personal rupture into a meditation on how relationships and familiar places subtly shift, becoming strange or unrecognizable. Her images carry a gentle unease: the bright smile in Teeth (2025) calls to mind a child’s dental x-ray, where something waits just beneath the visible surface; in Watcher (2025), the imagined perspective of a coyote observing a human encounter becomes a way to consider vigilance, distance, and what it means to look from the outside in. Out of the Woodsoffers a compelling invitation to consider how painting can hold the uncertainties of memory and the quiet transformations that shape our emotional lives.

Bio

Brenda Draney is Cree from Sawridge First Nation, Treaty 8, with a strong connection to Slave Lake. Draney’s work is collected and shown across Canada including the National Gallery of Canada, the Embassy of Canada Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Alberta, the Sobey Collection, and the Shorefast Foundation. She shows internationally and is represented by galleries in Canada and the United States. She won both the 2009 RBC Painting Competition and 2014’s Eldon and Anne Foote Visual Arts Prize in Edmonton and was short listed for the 2016 Sobey Art Award at the National Gallery of Canada.

Draney’s work visually represents the moment when vulnerability is exposed, while encouraging the viewer to reject the notion to dominate the void where horror, poignancy, or powerful moments exist. Draney encourages her viewer to face this void head on, but as an empath. She provides enough tools for the viewer to place their own narrative within her typical imaginary spaces.