What is my work about?
My process involves an intense dialogue with the sitter and a variety of techniques including photography, drawing, printmaking, and digital editing to create a painted portrait. It is important to me that each portrait be a response to an individual?s character, reflecting their place in the world and our relationship in the shapes, colors, and scale of the figure, and in objects, references, and words that also are significant to the sitter. I think of my paintings as a counterpoint to the ways in which social media and historical paintings use the human body (especially the female body) as an empty, decorated, or commoditized vessel. I want my paintings to reveal a new image of the person, within an abstract space that is unique to them and also open to interpretation. The portraits offer an alternative way of seeing people.
Artist Statement
I paint close friends who are often other artists, and family members. My process, taking and scrutinizing photos, editing them on the computer, making drawings, using various printmaking techniques, and then creating a new image, under certain constraints, sometimes with a live model, reflects my perception of our contemporary space. By contemporary space I am referring to the mental space most of us currently inhabit, a space that is as much digital as it is physical. The layers of marks in my paintings, like the digital layers in Photoshop, allow multiple images to exist in one painting. Although a painting is often considered a two-dimensional space, it is actually three-dimensional, a record of many textures and gestures. This physicality, the scale and consistency of my hand, is a counterpoint to the digital organization of the image.
The portraits come from a twofold process. The way that the painting provides a record of the strokes of my hand is key, so it is important that I keep my plan of action open to my sitter. The first part of my process is training my hand and my eye. I look at art and media images and make things everyday. The things (drawings, prints, watercolors, still lifes, landscapes) give my hand and my mind practice. The second part of my process is having a dialogue with my sitters, asking them what they would like to have in their portrait, spending time together, and spending time with their work and the books or other ideas they share with me. When I begin the portraits the image is a reaction to the person—the shape, size and color of the surface is important. I like to give the person the option of sitting for the painting, or of using photographs, or of combining these methods, sitting for a sketch or coming near the end of the painting for a touch up. In this way, each portrait is an occasion for a newly abstracted space, a combination of my hands’ relationship to art, and my relationship to the sitter.
I have always been interested in the relationship between visual painted space and noumenal (idea) space. I decided that I wanted to be a painter when I was reading Edith Wharton’s novel The House of Mirth. I was thinking about women in rooms. In this novel the heroine Lily Bart is in constant contrast to her space, or physical environment. Emotionally, she is torn between true love and the comforts of society. The novel begins, “Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart.” The novel emphasizes the contrast between a person as seen in space, a person’s thoughts while they are being looked at, and how this person’s features and accouterments affect their societal interactions. Less dynamically, it is a feminist statement against women being viewed as “objects,” decorative elements in their environments. I find the statement to still be pertinent because I daily encounter images that reinforce this decorative view of women, and the elevation of fashionable materialism. I am interested in painting the qualities of a person that go beyond this superficial visual pairing of figure and ground. I hope that my paintings inspire an unconventional thinking that could be applied to changing any structure.
CV
Education
2014
Columbia University, NY, NY, MFA
2008
Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, BA, Liberal Arts
2006
Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Venice, Italy
2005
Instituto Lorenzo de’ Medici, Florence, Italy
2004
Reed College, Portland, OR
The Bronx High School of Science, Bronx, NY
2003
Yale University, New Haven, CT
Solo Exhibitions
2011
“Painting for Love” Con Artist Gallery, New York, NY
2008
“I Know I Need Unique New York” a*space, Bronxville, NY
2007
“Take A Closer Look” Heimbold Arts Center, Bronxville, NY
Group Exhibitions
2013
“United Against Speculation” The Leroy Neiman Gallery, NY, NY organized by Rirkrit Tiravanija and Tomas Vu
“Networking Tips for Shy People” 200 Livingston Street, Brooklyn, NY, organized by Amanda Ryan, Ruth Patir and Cole Sayer
“The Beauty of Friends Coming Together” Industry Cities, Brooklyn, NY curated by Phong Bui
“And after a pause, it continued.” The Wallach Art Gallery, NY, NY curated by Jenny Jasky
“Magical Thinking” 200 Livingston Street, Brooklyn, NY curated by Juliette Premmereur and Dana Liss
2012
“Seeking Space” The Loom, Brooklyn, NY curated by Jillian Salik and Julia Sinelnikova
“For Her Love” Arts East New York Inc., Brooklyn, NY curated by Erika Petterson
2011
“The Lifecatching Project” Con Artist Gallery, New York, NY
“Seeking Space” The Loom, Brooklyn, NY curated by Jillian Salik and Julia Sinelnikova
2010
“Seeking Space” 330 Morgan Ave, Brooklyn, NY curated by Jillian Salik and Julia Sinelnikova
“Sideshow Silent Art Auction” The Gowanus Hotel Ballroom, Brooklyn, NY curated by Sarah Zar
2009
“It’s a Wonderful Life” Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY curated by Richard Timperio
2008
Brooklyn Rail Auction, Pace Wildenstein Gallery, New York, NY curated by Phong Bui
Barbara Walters Gallery, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY curated by Dean Daderko
2007
Barbara Walters Gallery, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY curated by Edwin Ramoran
Awards
2013
Rose Biller Scholarship
Teaching Assistant Tuition Fellowship
Edward Mazzella Scholarship
Faber Birren Scholarship
Andrew Fisher Fellowship
2012
Visual Arts Fellowship
2011
The Vermont Studio Center Artist/Writer Grant
Residencies
2014
Byrdcliffe Artist in Residence
2011
The Vermont Studio Center
Bibliography
Megan Garwood, on-verge “Gallery Nights Every Wednesday this February: Heidi Howard through January at Con Artist” February 2011