Sandra Bray

Sandra Bray's current work toggles between ink drawings of social explorations and oil landscapes of the peaceful world she feels lucky to inhabit.  The common theme through her artistic eras of water colour, figure drawing, oil painting, and ink drawings has been our human existence in relation to the world she inhabits.  For Bray, feelings of comfort and familiarity abound when she paints landscapes; during that time, her questioning concerns technique: the use of paint and colour to create form, atmosphere and earthiness.  In ink drawings, a traditional social commentary medium, Bray explores her curiosity about our human, mimetic nature;  these require much more planning, fact gathering, several drafts, and thoughtful deliberation.

The audience Bray wishes to reach is the curious, the thoughtful, those who wish to have their worlds broadened, their thought-loop expanded, their framework more agile.  She is motivated largely by her own interest and curiosity in our human condition, wondering how to name and describe what it is we do, so that she has choices as to whether or not to participate in the recognized cultural practice/habit.  Bray's goal is to gain distance from herself and her views, to ‘see’ her culture from a more disinterested perspective.

Currently she uses the richness of oils to portray our fertile and peaceful landscapes, which seem in jeopardy, not due to war in Canada, but due to our unenlightened self-interest.  Bray feels conflict - using toxic materials to portray the land that feeds her. Is she part of the problem but also part of an admirable tradition.  Can not everyone make the same claim?  She is not alone.  The immediacy and low toxicity of ink allows her to hope that, although the medium is relatively harmless, finding a disinterested vision of Canadian society may shift a viewer’s inner landscape, as this new distant perspective has shifted hers.  Often sketch book squiggles are the basis for a fully developed piece; hasty notes of interesting points, which, when developed and strung together, compose a stimulating new outlook. 

The oil paintings Bray makes, are in a traditional style of representational art, with the aim of creating a small moment of suspended time for a viewer, one where the concerns of one’s day are set aside momentarily for the sake of a moment of appreciation of all that we have.  A moment of no worries, no cares and no tomorrows.

Bray's ink work links the modern and post-modern eras.  While she appreciates and seeks technical ability, she also seeks to explore the multi-faceted world she lives in, the one with no answers.  In developing her technical skills, she hopes to explore contemporary concerns, using techniques that emphasize the grace and beauty of the representational tradition.

Perhaps the radio is her largest influence; she listens, making notes of ideas and thoughts that are new to her.  Bray's current series is titled:  Imaginaries of Peace and was inspired by one of the CBC radio show on a program titled  ‘Ideas’.  The word ‘imaginaries’ applies to the unconscious, collective thoughts or ideas that a group/culture carries surrounding a specific concept and I began to wonder about our imaginaries of peace.  Ideas abound.                                           

Hearing words placed next to one another for the first time is arresting.  Rene Girard’s concept of “Humans as a mimetic species …”   What does this mean in my life?  Do I imitate in serious ways?  Whom?  How?  Is this the cause of war?  Of  discrimination?  What are the boundaries to the effects of this hardwiring?  Listening to the radio always requires a notebook and pen in hand. Bray learns aurally although she expresses herself visually.  Largely her works address contemporary issues, seeking linkages to other views, cultural thoughts and behaviours.

Exhibiting in other countries/cultures has been a sensitizing experience.  Usually she has her statement and any words on an art piece translated; imagining someone of a different culture reading her words has heightened her awareness of her own biases.  Expressing herself precisely and finding exact translation has been very important.