About Brenda
Brenda Burger is an artist, educator, and storyteller whose work has centered on helping people discover their authentic voice through creativity. After a successful career in executive leadership and more than twenty years teaching art to students of all ages, she has expanded her passion for storytelling onto canvas as well as film.
Her screen credits include Tangled Up in Christmas, The Station, and the 2023 Durango Independent Film Festival trailer. She brings warmth, intelligence, emotional honesty, and a lifetime of real-world experience to every role she portrays.
As a professional portrait artist, Brenda has spent decades observing the subtle expressions and emotions that reveal a person's story. That same attention to human connection informs her work as an actor, allowing her to create grounded, believable characters with depth and authenticity.
Based in Arizona, Brenda enjoys roles that reflect compassion, wisdom, resilience, humor, and the complexity of everyday life.
She believes that art has never been about the medium, whether in paint, crayons or film; rather, it has always been about learning to see. According to her hero, Betty Edwards, "When you change the way you look at something, the thing you look at changes." This is fundamental to her personal philosophy and her experience with her work and her students.
Whether painting a portrait, teaching about creativity, writing, or performing on screen, her work begins with the same belief:
Every person has a story worth seeing. The best part?
The joyous and often cathartic breakthroughs, and sharing the inspiration with others every day.
Creativity has a way of finding what's missing.
Sometimes it's a painting that transforms a home.
Sometimes it's learning to draw for the first time.
Sometimes it's finding the right collaborator for a creative project.
Whatever the challenge, creativity has the power to change how we see the world—and ourselves.
Welcome.
I'm Brenda.
Let's create something meaningful together.
Education
1994-1998
BA
St. John's College, Santa Fe, NM
Awarded a BA in liberal arts, with a focus on the Great Books curriculum. Double major in math and philosophy and a double minor in science and linguistics. This program has a mandatory course of study and is collaborative in its approach. Students enjoy working together in pursuit of refined ideas, presenting to each other and discussing topics in traditional Socratic round table dialogue. From Euclid to Einstein, Goethe to Newton, and Homer to Flaubert, all topics are based on original texts. I used this as a foundation for pre-law and a teaching career.
University of Toledo College of Law/Dispute Resolution Center of Washtenaw County
Eastern Michigan University
While planning to become a lawyer I left law school to study mediation instead as it felt more authentic in creating peaceful resolution for those in conflict.
Pursued a Masters in Fine Art with a focus in painting, and went on to teach art for 20 years.
Additional Credentials:
Pennsylvania Teaching Certification
Volunteer Mediator Certification
Nonviolent Communication / Crisis Prevention Institute
Graduate of Leadership: Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, MI
Mission
To inspire people to discover the transformative power of creativity by helping them see the world—and themselves—from a new perspective.
Vision
A world where creativity is recognized not as a talent reserved for a few, but as an essential part of being human.
