Alexandrya Eaton (she/her) is a contemporary Canadian visual artist whose practice includes painting, textiles, sculpture, and weaving. Eaton’s current research examines how fabric manipulations can be incorporated into painting practice, and how the canvas, a woven material, accepts these folds and stitches, conceptually exploring layers and connections of material and memory. 

In a practice spanning over thirty years, Eaton has had close to fifty solo exhibitions, participated in numerous group exhibitions, and her work can be found in many private and public collections. In addition to two solo exhibitions this year in 2023, Eaton’s work will be part of the exhibition, Dissident Bodies, curated by Alisa Arsenault, looking at how parenting influences creative practice, at the Owens Art Gallery, in Sackville, as well as group exhibitions in Vancouver, British Columbia, and New York, New York, USA. 

Eaton’s work has been acquired by: the New Brunswick Art Bank; Mount Allison University; RBC Dominion Securities; Aliant Telecom; Nesbitt Burns; NB Power; the UNB Art Centre; Toronto Dominion Bank; Atlantic Lottery Corporation; Centre d’Art de Baie-Saint-Paul; and the Masterworks Foundation, among many other public and corporate collections.

Early in her career, Eaton was invited to participate in the Symposium de la Jeune Peinture au Canada, in Baie- Saint-Paul, Quebec. The youngest of fifteen international artists, her large twenty-foot painting then traveled to the exhibition, TERRE-TERRE, at the Museum of the Americas, in Washington, D.C.

Over the years, Eaton’s paintings have been included in several important group exhibitions, such as: Anecdotes and Enigmas, curated by Hermenegilde Chiasson; and BLISS, curated by Shauna McCabe. BLISS combined the work of four international artists exploring the image and idea of flowers and flowering, and its relationship to the poetic, questioning modern perceptions of beauty. 

Eaton's work was also included in Artists in a Floating World and Images of our Time and Place, both curated by Tom Smart, as well as Psi-kewk keti mewi~Tout va Bien Aller~Everything is Gonna be Fine~Wela’sitew na, celebrating 50 Years of the New Brunswick Art Bank, curated by 3E Collective. In 2023, Eaton’s work was chosen to be part of Art Walk Toronto, a public art installation curated by Liza Zhurkovskaya.

Eaton’s Busy Woman series explores her personal experience as a working mother, developing into a playful social commentary on working mothers as everyday superheroes. As a result, Eaton was invited to participate in the group exhibition, Hot Pop Soup: Neo-Pop Trends in Contemporary New Brunswick Art, curated by Terry Graff, in 2012, for which she created her large mural, Superhero Warehouse.

Over the years, Alexandrya has received many project grants to continue the development of her work. In 2015, she was awarded a creation grant from artsnb to carry out a two year fibre arts project. This pivotal project resulted in a large body of work and ultimately the solo exhibition, Becoming, which was shown five times across New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, beginning at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, in 2018; Sunbury Shores Arts & Nature Centre, in Saint Andrews, in 2019; and the Saint John Arts Centre in 2021.

Becoming was also included in Eaton's retrospective exhibition, Everything in Between, at the Owens Art Gallery, in 2021. Everything in Between was curated by the New Brunswick curatorial group, 3E Collective, and celebrated thirty years of Eaton's art practice.

3E Collective, comprised of Emilie Grace Lavoie, Erin Goodine and Emma Hassencahl-Perley, also wrote the accompanying retrospective publication, Everything in Between, which looks back over thirty years of Eaton's artmaking, placing Eaton's work within the critical context of time and place, and offering insights on motherhood and femininity. With over one hundred colour images, the book offers a thorough survey of Eaton's art practice over the past three decades. Eaton gratefully acknowledges that funding for the book project was provided by the New Brunswick Arts Board. 

In 2022, Eaton was awarded Canadian Rug Hooking Artist of the Year and was honoured with a solo exhibition at the Hooked Rug Museum of North America.

For the past three decades, Alexandrya Eaton has maintained a steadfast commitment to studio practice, a rigorous exhibition schedule, and a longstanding commitment to community involvement. Eaton is currently completing a Master of Fine Art through Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Eaton’s artwork investigates alternative ways of knowing and demonstrates how traditional textile practices can be integrated into a painting practice as a bodily form of memory, reaffirming matrilineal connections through making. 

Eaton lives and works in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada. The artist acknowledges that this land is located within the traditional territory of Mi'kma'ki, the unceded ancestral homelands of the Mi'kmaq.