Angela Hartranft Abstract Art

Born 1969. Originally, an architectural drafter (CAD). Indigenous artist and writer under my maiden name, Angela Grey. I'm Dakota Sioux and an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate (Enemy Swim District on the Lake Traverse Reservation) in South Dakota.

I'm an Indigenous and American artist (Western European descent) whose work is shaped by memory, place, resilience, and the emotional language of color. My childhood was divided between the Enemy Swim District of the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota and Brooklyn, New York—two environments that offered sharply different experiences of landscape, culture, movement, and belonging. That contrast continues to influence the way I approach abstraction: as a meeting place between quiet and intensity, earth and atmosphere, history and reinvention.

I work primarily in acrylic and watercolor, using palette knives, sponges, brushes, and layered mark-making to create abstract paintings that feel both grounded and expansive. I am drawn to textured surfaces, partially concealed forms, shifting horizons, and colors that appear to emerge from beneath one another. My process is intuitive, but not accidental. Each layer becomes a record of a decision about what is revealed, what is...

Normandale Community College, Bloomington, Minnesota, USA

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA