Zoe Bray

Zoe Bray is a visual artist, hailing from Europe, with roots in the Basque Country. She has lived in various countries across the globe and is fluent in five languages, including Spanish. Bray trained in the traditional techniques of fine art, studying drawing, sculpting, and painting from the live model, at the traditional atelier-style schools of the Charles Cecil Studios and the Florence Academy of Art (Italy), and the Arauco Academy in Madrid (Spain). She also holds an Master of Arts in social anthropology from the University of Edinburgh (Scotland) and a Ph.D. in social and political science from the European University Institute (Italy). Bray teaches in schools, both public, private and charter, including Montessori and Waldorf. She also offers lessons in community and senior centers, as well as in institutions of further education.

Her practice focuses on fine art—drawing, painting, and sculpting from nature, using traditional techniques and materials. Bray specializes in representation via realistic portraiture, imaginary illustration, and natural craft. Her interest lies in pushing the boundaries of fine art, combining it with ethnographic inquiry to address issues of contemporary life, including identity and human-nature relations. Through exhibitions, performances, demos, and teaching, she aspires to build bridges between communities and the natural environment.

While she is principally a painter by practice, her ability to teach with other media is diverse. Bray encourages thinking outside the box and questioning established ways of thinking. In her lessons, she fosters both collaboration and personal artistic exploration. She stresses the importance of bringing students out of the classroom to familiarize themselves and interact with their natural environment. Her lessons are hands-on, practice-based, and involve key exposure to the organic base of art-making using natural materials. Bray animates students to explore their imagination and different identities, and to probe diverse situations and contexts. Through art-making in its various forms, Bray seeks to bring out and reflect on different cosmologies and human-nature relations. Her pedagogy focuses on process rather than final product. She highlights the intuitive side of making, encouraging participants to explore tactility and emotion.