The Canadian artist Brenda Petays works with painting, drawing, installation, and performance art. She is interested in the elements of body, time, space, story, and action in an ongoing examination. She is a Canadian-born of Finnish descent and grew up in the New Finland colony in southeast Saskatchewan, surrounded by immigrant Finnish peasant farmers like her parents and grandparents. Her Finnish roots interest her, confuse her and challenge her. What did her ancestors invite her to do? What have they asked her to create?
In residence she participated in “becoming Finnish” and translating these ideas into images and objects for the exhibition Samasta puusta veistetty, seen at the Nättepori Cultural Centre. She worked with ice, birch bark, stone, and other organic materials.