Exhibition Description: Drawing on my childhood practice of collecting specimens from the natural world, I invite a sense of play and experimentation to this exploration of the botanical. Multi-layered plant photograms are orchestrated employing the cyanotype process, an early photographic method where sunlight acts upon iron salts to create rich blue tones. Some works deemed as "failed" have been re-worked, toned and hand cut drawing upon the leaf shapes present in the layers. This (re) presentation, an entangled re-mix of the plant matter becomes a pseudo depiction of the original. Discards and scraps have been further considered into abstract assemblage. 

Artist Bio: Brenda Stuart (she/her) is a visual artist who lives and works between Treaty one Territory (Winnipeg), Canada and Cardiff, Wales. Process, exploration and play form an integral part of her artistic practice where she mainly employs early photographic methods such as pinhole and cyanotype to respond to her surroundings and movement between places. She has previously served on the board at Platform centre for photographic and digital arts in Winnipeg. She has studied continuing education courses at Ffotogallery, Wales, accredited by Cardiff Metropolitan University.  Recent exhibitions include the online exhibition “Out of the Blue” with Analog Forever Magazine, U.S.A. and Unearthing at aceartinc, Winnipeg. Her work is in private collections in Canada and the United Kingdom. In 2021-2022 she participated in the Foundation Mentorship Program with Mentoring Artists in Women’s Art (MAWA) in Winnipeg.