BIO
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Brenna is a fine artist from Long Island and currently based in New York. She earned a BFA with highest honors, with a concentration of painting at Pratt Institute in 2017.
Though skilled in various mediums such as painting, drawing, embroidery, digital art and mural painting, Brenna tends to focus in oil paint while bringing in some unexpected material along the way. Her most recent focus includes the concept of memory and her own disassociation with it.
She also uses tattooing as an extended form of artwork, currently working on Long Island, NY
She has exhibited in many group shows at venues that include Greenpoint Gallery, The Warsaw and Fenimore Art Museum, all in New York, and has been featured in various press such as RAW Features and The Examiner.
STATEMENT
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Human relationships are complicated. Memories of these relationships are even more complicated. Memory is fluid and fragile, and often misinterpreted. My memory personally is fragmented, vague, and barely there. This lack of the ability to remember makes its way into my work as I attempt to put together the pieces that make up past relationships between me and my family members, between me and myself, between me and my environment, between me and strangers.
Though personal, the work is not secluding, rather it hopes to invite others in to a certain space of vulnerability. I use various forms of media to literally and figuratively piece together the few distant thoughts that I am able to recall. Pieces are rarely scaled beyond human size, and are mostly small enough to hold and examine. They allow the viewer to meditate on their own memories, and think about things in a more honest way. I choose to allow my past to influence the way I view the world, and this work encourages others to do the same.
Paintings, photographs, building supplies, sewn fabric, and many various materials make up this work, allowing me to explore the same idea of memory in as many ways as possible. Images of interiors and of family portraits are obscured and erased by washes of paint, and broken drywall faces you with the reminder that a home is a fragile place. There is an underlying sense of violence about, but one that induces a feeling of melancholy rather than confrontation. Most of the time this sadness is subconsciously built into the work created, and later asks for a reflection, which then influences what comes next.
The work becomes a material, physical manifestation not just of the memories but also of our reactions to them.