'I paint what I pass every day': How Armley artist Jenny Bratt turned street sofas into award-winning art

In modern urban life, there is a tendency to rush past the ordinary.

We walk through our neighbourhoods with our heads down, eyes fixed on phone screens, treating the streets we live on merely as a backdrop to get from one point to another.

For 44-year-old Leeds artist Jenny Bratt, however, inspiration does not require travelling to far-flung landscapes or grand national galleries.

Instead, it lives in the red-brick terraces, discarded street sofas, and fleeting daily encounters right outside her front door in Armley.

"I paint what I pass every day," Jenny explains to the Yorkshire Evening Post.

That deep affection for her local neighbourhood forms the emotional heart of her debut solo exhibition, Here, Somehow, which opened earlier this month at the South Square Centre in Bradford, following her win of the prestigious 2026 Joan Day Bursary Award.

The bursary - established in memory of the late painter Joan Day to champion emerging regional talent - has provided Jenny with the platform to showcase a body of work that turns the hyper-local into something universal.

Her paintings offer a warm, curious, and often existential look at West Yorkshire street life, capturing secret domestic scenes, familiar street corners, and the unspoken narratives of a close-knit community.

"In a place like Armley, you can't walk down the street without seeing someone you know or coming across an everyday scene that carries its own quiet story," Jenny says.

"There’s something deeply existential about these ordinary moments—a sofa left on a pavement, a conversation on a doorstep, or light hitting a familiar corner."

For Jenny, those discarded household items sitting on kerbs aren't signs of neglect; they are monuments to human transition.

They carry the marks of the people who sat on them, argued on them, or relaxed on them before they were moved outside.

Rather than treating the urban environment as cold concrete, her canvas subjects evoke an immediate sense of recognition for Leeds residents, while leaving enough space for viewers to project their own memories onto the canvas.

'An undeniable creative vein'

Crucially, Jenny’s work taps into a broader cultural shift happening across West Leeds - one driven by independent spirit, pop-up gallery spaces, and an unpretentious DIY arts community that continues to flourish away from traditional institution walls.

"Armley has this undeniable creative vein running right through it," Jenny points out.

"You see it in the pop-up galleries, Assembly House, the artist-run spaces popping up in former shops, and the sheer number of makers working quietly out of spare rooms and back terraces.”

Jenny then jokes that “there’s a raw, unpolished energy here that you just don't get in formal gallery spaces” - remarking that perhaps we should change the adjectives to describe Armley from ‘gritty’ to ‘bohemian.’

For Jenny, those grassroots initiatives prove that culture isn't something dropped into a neighbourhood from above - it is generated by the people living there.

"You realise that a neighbourhood is just a network of people connecting the dots," she adds. "When you slow down and actually look at how we share space in a place like Leeds, you see how much warmth, creativity, and resilience there is in everyday life."

The exhibition features a curated selection of drawings, oil paintings, and fabric pieces created specifically for Here, Somehow, each reflecting the subtle textures and muted palette of the local landscape.

For Jenny, what makes Armley so distinctive isn't just its visual character, but an overriding sense of deep familiarity.

"There’s a comfort in that familiarity," Jenny reflects. "When you live and work in a place like Armley for a long time, the streets stop being just places you walk through and start becoming shared memories. You recognise the rhythm of the place, the faces, the way light hits a specific wall at five o'clock.

"That familiarity gives you a sense of belonging. It makes the ordinary feel significant, because it’s yours—it’s the backdrop to your actual life."

It is that quiet, affectionate recognition that she hopes resonates most with visitors viewing the collection.

West Yorkshire art lovers and residents will have the opportunity to hear directly from the artist this weekend as part of the exhibition's opening public events.

A special Meet the Artist Q&A session takes place on Saturday (September 26) from 12pm to 2pm at the South Square Centre, where Jenny will be joined by South Square’s Programme and Gallery Manager, Domino Canton-Oakley, to unpack the stories behind the canvas.

"I hope people come along and have a chat, but more than anything, I just want them to leave looking at their own doorstep a little differently," Jenny says.

"If someone walks out of the gallery, looks down their street, and sees something beautiful in a corner they’ve passed a hundred times before, then the work has done its job."

Here, Somehow by Jenny Bratt runs at South Square Gallery, South Square, Thornton, Bradford, BD13 3LD, until November 1. Admission is free.