Heather Drayzen

Towards the Sun

October 10 - November 9, 2025

New York, NY — My Pet Ram is pleased to present Towards the Sun, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Heather Drayzen. This marks the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery and will open on October 10, 2025 with a reception from 6-9 PM. An artist talk will be held on Saturday, October 25th at 1 PM.

“In the summer of 2024, we headed west. I had just lost my art teacher, Jennifer Janak. I got off the plane from New York, and my nephew, Zen, picked me up in Texas with a Big Gulp in hand. He drove me to her funeral, where dozens of loved ones including alumni gathered in the chapel on short notice. Some came dressed as Janak (we all just called her ‘Janak’ never ms or mrs) herself, in painted denim button downs to match her iconic style. Her casket was signed with Sharpies like a yearbook, and we traded stories of the ways she had shaped all of our lives for the better.

Afterward, I felt a gut instinct to keep moving. I booked a trip to New Mexico to trace the footsteps of Georgia O’Keeffe in Abiquiú, an artist I had first studied in Janak’s class. I wanted to see that desert light for myself and to be near the magical space that I believed had allowed both O’Keeffe and Agnes Martin to live into their nineties. Time, as always, was on my mind. I felt a sense of kinship, one painter reaching across time to another. I was curious, and any excuse for a pilgrimage seemed enough.

I began the paintings in this show needing to feel the sun on my face and the open sky above me. Over the course of the last year, we traveled further to Los Angeles, Iceland, and France, with another pilgrimage this time to Giverny. I injured my hand and slowly nurtured it back to capacity. We moved to Manhattan and quickly returned to Brooklyn. Our niece was born. These paintings were made through and within all of that: after work, on breaks, and in stolen moments.

In the end, it’s the light and the simple, quiet scenes that continue to stay with me. My dogs lying in a sunbeam on the studio floor. My husband sitting in the bath as light strikes the tiles, casting reflections that shimmer like stardust through the curtain. These are the moments when I feel most alive. Painting as a way to archive my life, preserve memory, and embed time into the surface. Nightly rituals, slivers of light, and sun-drenched days shaped these paintings. They are a record of my year moving around, forward, and towards the sun.“

-Heather Drayzen, 2025

My Pet Ram, 48 Hester Street, New York, NY

Photography by Daniel Greer

TWO COATS OF PAINT REVIEW BY LUCAS MORAN

Interview with Brainard Carey on Yale Radio