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

Heather Drayzen (b. 1985, San Antonio, Texas) is a painter known for her intimate, small-scale depictions of quiet domestic life, often featuring herself and her loved ones. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Drayzen received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 2007, and earned an MAT from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2008. She presented her debut solo exhibition, The Way Home, with My Pet Ram in 2024. That same year, she was featured in a two-person exhibition at The Middle Room Gallery in Los Angeles. In 2023, she exhibited alongside Julia Blume in the two-person show as long as you want at My Pet Ram, and her work was featured on David Zwirner’s PLATFORM.

Her paintings have been included in group exhibitions at Massey Klein Gallery (New York, 2025), EDJI Gallery (Brussels, 2025), Noon Projects (Los Angeles, 2024), Myriam Chair Galerie (Paris, 2023), Thierry Goldberg (New York, 2023), and Pentimenti Gallery (Philadelphia, 2023), among others. Drayzen was an artist-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center in 2023 and attended the Hafnarborg Residency in Iceland in 2025. Her work has been featured in ArtMaze Magazine (Issues 26 and Double Volume Edition 30–31), and her works on paper were included in Trove, presented by Deanna Evans Projects in 2023.

The gallery is located at 48 Hester Street on the Lower East Side. Gallery hours are Thursday–Sunday, 12–6 PM, and by appointment. For more information, please contact info@mypetram.com.