Mixed Media on Paper Puget Sound, Washington Sandpipers · Watercolor, ink and gold leaf on paper The Artist
Britt Freda holds a double degree with honors in fine art and writing from St. Lawrence University in New York. She studied at the Lorenzo de’ Medici Institute of Art in Florence and, by invitation, at La Cipressaia in Montagnana, Italy, under South African artists Rose Shakinovsky and Claire Gavronsky. The European training is present in her work: the formal relationship between figure and ground, the drawing discipline beneath the painted surface, the gold leaf — all carry the weight of a practice formed in dialogue with centuries of Western image-making.
Since 2011, her primary subject has been endangered species. Each work is built on paper or birch panel — watercolor, acrylic, graphite, ink, and gold leaf applied in layers, the surface embedded with etched words, statistics, poems, maps, and seedpods. The embedded material is not decoration: the population data, the poetic text, the map fragments locating the animal in its remaining range are part of the work’s argument. The painting makes the case for the animal not just visually but informationally.
Her work was included in the 2013–2015 Environmental Impact U.S. museum tour and is part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming. Tahlequah’s Respair, J35 and J57 (2021, acrylic, graphite and gold leaf on birch panel, 36″ × 48″) holds two moments together — J35 carrying her dead newborn for seventeen days in 2018, and the birth of J57, a healthy male, in September 2020. The title comes from respair, an archaic word for fresh hope after despair. The title comes from respair, an archaic word for fresh hope after despair.
Freda is the Creative Director of Northwest Artists Against Extinction, a project of the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition. In 2023 she curated Honor: People and Salmon, a group exhibition at the Kittredge Gallery, University of Puget Sound, with a subsequent presentation at Patagonia Seattle. Her work also appears on the Vashon Audubon Mural Project, a public wall depicting climate-threatened Pacific Northwest birds, and in Patagonia’s #VoteOurPlanet campaign with the Creative Action Network.
She lives on a small island in Puget Sound, on the traditional lands of the sx̌ʷəbabš Coast Salish people. The same waters are home to Tahlequah and the J Pod orcas. From there, with her family beside her, she paints toward future generations.
Britt's work is shown across both Bainbridge and Park City. Browse the full collection — medium, dimensions, and price visible on every piece.
