Brandy Saturley
Parksville, BC
Brandy Saturley award-winning Canadian Artist known for her paintings of Canadian pop culture rendered in her signature brand of pop realism #iconiccanuck™
Message
Brandy Saturley (born 1972) is an independent interdisciplinary Canadian “pop art” visual artist and speaker who is best-known for her paintings depicting aspects of Canadian culture, notably people, landscapes, and Canadian iconography.
Saturley studied feature film production at Victoria Motion Picture School, visual arts and art history at Camosun College, visual culture at Emily Carr University and also studied contemporary art practices at the Royal College of Art in London, England.
Saturley has created more than 400 paintings as part of a collection known as “Pop Canadianisms” inspired by her travels across Canada starting in 2010. She has showcased her work on solo tours throughout the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta while selling her art in Canada, the United States, and throughout Europe. In 2014, Saturley founded the People of Canada Portrait Project, an online exhibition of painted portraits created by Saturley that consists of 20 portraits of Canadians. After six years, the project launched in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Saturley is known for creating a series of paintings designed to represent elements of Canadian culture and identity known as The Iconic collection. She held her first public exhibition of the collection in 2013. The work attracted the attention of Canadian director, Randy Frykas, who directed and produced the short documentary film The Iconic Canuck in 2020.
In 2022, Saturley was awarded the Paul D. Fleck Fellowships in the Arts Endowment for her residency in the Leighton Studios at The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
Short documentary film about Brandy Saturley (early life and impetus for paintings about hockey) : The Iconic Canuck
Statement
Artist Statement: I am obsessed with the iconography of my country, and I am in turn creating my own.
What informed my work began with ‘popular culture’ and stereotype. Over the years I became more interested in ‘authentic experiences’ and I began to travel to gain a true understanding of the collective Canadian consciousness, and in returning home to Vancouver Island, a better understanding of the culture in which I was raised. My practice focuses on acrylic painting on canvas, and over the years has incorporated collage, photography, writing, and video. My paintings encompass themes related to Canadian popular culture, symbolism, and the landscape; distinctly rendered in my signature pop realism aesthetic and vivid palettes.