Heather Drayzen

The Way Home

May 3, 2024 - June 2, 2024

New York, NY - My Pet Ram is pleased to present The Way Home featuring new paintings by Heather Drayzen.

Drayzen makes small-scale paintings of quiet, domestic scenes featuring herself and her loved ones. Drawing from her interior world and emotions, she heightens experiences like sharing a cup of morning coffee, grabbing a bite from the fridge, or napping with the pups through atmospheres of iridescent golden light. The chromatic intensity and subject matter in Drayzen's paintings feel undeniably contemporary, yet she also borrows elements from historical masters, such as Bonnard, Vuillard, Morisot, and Munch. The artist pares down parts of her paintings to varying degrees, which creates a psychological energy that flirts between figuration and abstraction. Meanwhile, fields of Day-Glo color contrast with more neutral tones to offer viewers a generous sensory experience. Overall, Drayzen's painted vignettes are placed within a longer timeline, creating a luminous, emotional narrative.

Over winter break, we drove four hours along the Texas highway to see Bonnard’s retrospective at the Kimbell Museum. On the way home, the moon adorned in a blue ochre sky, trailed behind us, a celestial companion in the night. Marthe in the Bath and Bonnard’s paintings after her passing echoed in my thoughts, their glistening vermillions casting shadows on my reflections. I thought about how moments in my own life string together like this moon weaving in and out from behind the clouds flooding them with light.

This work is a love letter to the people I cherish and to my immediate world. In May 2023, I was hospitalized and endured a flood in July. Since then, I’ve carried on for the last year painting, riding the train, teaching, visiting family and friends and stitching these moments together in paint form. My paintings are touched with the seasons and time of day along with the rituals of my daily life - from mixing my palette, my husband shaving in the Catskills, light dancing on the studio floor, lying in my hospital bed, and prisms shimmering through my window.

-Heather Drayzen, 2024

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

Interview with Jan Dickey for Whitehot Magazine