Artists in Conversation: Brenda Whiteway on Art, Place, and Time

This winter, visitors are invited to explore Together with Time, a new exhibition at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery curated by the Gallery’s new Director, Pan Wendt. Bringing past and present into conversation, the exhibition highlights art’s ability to connect memory, history, and lived experience. Among the featured artists is Island painter Brenda Whiteway, the newest Island Focus artist, whose work reflects on Prince Edward Island through the lens of time, change, and evolution.

Born and raised on PEI, Whiteway was recently awarded the Father Adrienne Arsenault Senior Arts Award at the PEI Arts Awards. She describes the recognition as “humbling and motivating,” words that feel especially fitting after spending time in conversation with her.

Whiteway has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions, and her work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Canada Council Art Bank, the PEI Art Bank, and the Confederation Centre Art Gallery. Across her practice, place, story, and time remain central themes, with the Island’s land and its changing landscape appearing again and again in her work.

Growing up in rural PEI shaped how Whiteway sees and understands the world. Storytelling plays an important role in her artistic process; rather than working from rigid plans, she allows lived experience, observation, and intuition to guide the work as it unfolds.

One of the exhibition’s central paintings, Yield, brings these concerns into sharp focus. Whiteway explains that the work emerged from years of bicycle rides across the Island, travelling between Charlottetown and her family’s roots in southeastern PEI. Along the way, she photographed farmhouses and fields—one of which later became the setting for the painting. Around the same time, she met an elderly man at a draft-horse event whose gentle care for the animals stayed with her; he eventually became the figure in the work. In Yield, the man is visually separated from the land, while survey stakes hint at development and the gradual fading of farming traditions. The farmstead that inspired the painting no longer exists, underscoring one of the exhibition’s central themes: time changes everything.

Another work in the exhibition, The Fabric of Life, indicates Whiteway’s interest in science, heritage, and connection. Created around the time Dolly the sheep was cloned, the painting draws on the Greek myth of the Fates who spin, weave, and cut the thread of life as a metaphor for fragility and change. Incorporated into the work is a woven coverlet made for Whiteway’s grandmother from locally grown wool. Research with textile historian Mary Burnett helped Whiteway situate this family object within a broader cultural and historical context.

Ultimately, Whiteway’s art invites viewers to slow down, observe what is changing, and consider what we carry forward—together with time. Her work is on view to the public until February 15, 2026.

Photo credit: J.J. Steinfeld