My name is Bre Bryans and I’m an informally trained, yet heavily mentored, artist by nature and now by trade, living in Vancouver, BC Canada.
My story really starts at sixteen yrs old. I was that teenager busking, or rather attempting to sell my watercolour paintings at The Forks in Winnipeg. I only had one kind soul take pity on me and purchase a $10 original, but that one sale resulted in a head full of big dreams. By twenty, I’d moved to Calgary and started selling acrylic paintings on canvas hanging on coffee shop walls downtown. I don’t recall if I had 2 or 3 sales, but regardless it propelled me forward.
Years later, I found myself in Vancouver. I was gaining a reputation for my motorcycle pointillism pieces that I named The Asphalt Collection. Prints were being sold, and I decided to branch out and have some screen printed on limited edition up cycled T-shirts, my first taste of art meeting sustainable fashion.
Then I stopped.
Somewhere along the way, the joy started to fade. I was grateful for the attention, but I could feel myself being boxed into a genre that didn’t feel like me and I didn’t know how to re-direct. I always loved the look of motorcycles, but I was not a biker myself, so I just let it all go. For seven years, I barely touched art. I had regrets. I felt like I was abandoning my few but loyal fans, and I watched friends and others stick with the struggling artist life and finally push through.
In 2023, while recovering from surgery, I revisited the thing I’d lost. Art found me again. The stillness gave me space to reach for art materials but this time leaning into textures. It was fabric and textiles that pulled me in. There was something about their tactility and the challenge of reworking what already existed that felt deeply right.
To be continued…
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