For inquiries please contact hdrayzen@gmail.com
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💫 Two Coats of Paint Review by Lucas Moran
💫 Artist talk with Kate Sherman hosted by JD Raenbeau at My Pet Ram
💫 Interview with Brainard Carey on Yale Radio
💫 Studio tour and interview with Sam Blank’s Filling the Blank
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Bio
Heather Drayzen (b. 1985, San Antonio, TX) is a painter recognized for her intimate, small-scale depictions of quiet domestic scenes, often portraying herself and her loved ones. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Drayzen earned a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 2007, and an MAT from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2008. Her second solo exhibition, Towards the Sun, opened at My Pet Ram, New York, in October 2025, following her debut solo show at the same gallery in May 2024. That year, she also participated in a two-person exhibition at The Middle Room Gallery in Los Angeles. In 2023, her work was featured in a two-person show at My Pet Ram and included on PLATFORM.
Her work has been presented in group exhibitions at Massey Klein Gallery (New York, 2025), EDJI Gallery (Brussels, 2025), Noon Projects (Los Angeles, 2024), Myriam Chair Galerie (Paris, 2023), Thierry Goldberg (New York, 2023), and Pentimenti Gallery (Philadelphia, 2023), among others.
Drayzen has participated in artist residencies at the Vermont Studio Center (2023) and Hafnarborg, Iceland (2025). Her work has been featured in ArtMaze Magazine (Issues 26 and Double Volume Edition 30–31), and her works on paper were included in Trove, presented by Deanna Evans Projects in 2023.
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Statement
In 2019, and again in 2023, I experienced health scares that, along with the 2020 pandemic, created an urgency to document my life, memories, and relationships. My paintings grow from my lived experiences, interior world, and emotions—where tenderness, intimacy, and beauty are tools for survival.
I primarily paint small scale domestic scenes in oil on linen, often including myself and those I cherish in quiet reflective moments. These works are shaped by the rhythms of my everyday life with my husband and our dogs, and increasingly by the natural world and the way its beauty sustains me both emotionally and spiritually. Experiences like sharing a meal, drawing together, or taking a nap with the pups unfold in an atmosphere of iridescent golden light, highlighting the passage of time while also nodding to many art historical influences including Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, and Edvard Munch.
Each work serves as a vignette within a larger ongoing narrative that I imagine as a slow and continuous film or a lifelong poem. Ultimately my paintings are about what matters most: the devotional call to create, to love, to pay attention, and to look towards the light.
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