Annie Heisey: October 2019
Annie Heisey is an artist and educator living and working in her native city of Pittsburgh, PA. Best known for her paintings of beautifully rendered figures in abstracted or impossible environments, Heisey’s work aims to disrupt the viewer’s experience of a painting as a simulation of the physical world. Since receiving her MFA from Boston University in 2007, Heisey’s work has been exhibited nationally in galleries and institutions which include the Boston Center for the Arts, Site:Brooklyn Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA. Her awards include the Junior Artist Residency at the Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland, OR, a nomination for the Portland Art Museum’s NW Contemporary Art Award, and the 2019 Festival Award at the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Her work has been included in several catalogs and publications including the Boston Globe. She is represented locally by BoxHeart Gallery.
“For me painting is a metaphor for the continually shifting way I see the world. My art has always been about the way we each experience the world through our own unique lens, colored by our past, our personality, and our beliefs. Even our own memories can be deceptive, changing with the passage of time. I never remember things the same way my sister does. There is always a glitch in the collective image, like a print that is off-register. The more I search for the “reality” of a moment in time, the farther down the rabbit hole I find myself.
Like memory, painting is a deceiver. I have always been fascinated by the way strokes of paint can come together to build and describe a form, and also how they can dissolve that form and return to being marks on a surface. They produce the illusion that we understand what we are looking at, what we are experiencing, what we are living through. My work comes from a deeply personal place, drawing subject matter from my everyday life.
As I dive into my own slippery sense of reality, I also dissect it. I place fully rendered subjects inempty, abstract spaces, disrupting the viewer’s experience of painting as a simulation of the physical world. I create scenes with invented colors, impossible surroundings, and missing information. My paintings hover on the edge of dissolution, questioning what is real and what is merely paint.
By combining realism with abstraction and fantasy, my work explores the unreliable nature of perception and our readiness to accept what we see as truth. I hope that the impossibility of my paintings lead my viewers to question what they have accepted as “reality” and provide an opportunity for them to craft a new and better narrative for the world.”
Q&A with Annie Heisey
orchestrated by AAP staff member, Jamie Earnest
Jamie: When you find yourself in a creative rut or standstill, do you have certain methods or practices you use to get through it?
Annie: “For me the biggest thing I can do to get myself out of a rut is to go into the studio and start painting something, ANYTHING. A former
professor of mine used to say that work makes work and I have found that to be true, that once you just start painting the act of painting often leads you to an idea. I also like to look at my favorite artist books and see if I can glean a little inspiration from someone else.”
Jamie: Your works are so luscious and colorful - but at moments, soft an airy. Can you briefly expand on the role color and color interactions have in your work?
Annie: “Color is a huge part of my work, I use interactions between colors to soften transitions, pull compositions together and also to push certain aspects forward in a composition. I often make my source images black and white and work from an invented palette to push my colors farther from reality. I really enjoy playing with how the figure and the ground interact with each other, and how to push that figure/ground relationship to a place where they start to vibrate and push each other backwards and forwards. Color is a huge part of creating that tension.”
Jamie: How long have you been working as an artist in Pittsburgh? What are the possible benefits you see as a working artist in the area?
Annie: “I grew up in Pittsburgh but moved away after college and came back just shy of four years ago. So I've been a working artist for almost
15 years but only the last 3 years and change have been here in Pittsburgh. Working as an artist in other markets like Boston and Portland, OR, have given me an appreciation for Pittsburgh's unique art scene. I think Pittsburgh is a fantastic place to be an artist right now. The art scene here is growing fast but it’s also still small enough that most people know each other, which makes it easier to meet people and be part of a community. All of the artists I have met here have been generous with their time and their advice, it really is a community that lifts each other up rather than cutting each other's throats.”
Jamie: Finally, what advice would you give to young painters in Pittsburgh hoping to pursue a studio career?
Annie: “I tell young painters two things: paint as often as possible and talk to as many people as you can. Almost every artist begins with some
kind of day job and hones their craft in their "off hours" which is exhausting, but its necessary. If you want to be great you have to put in the time instead of just heading home at the end of the day like everyone else. And if you want to improve and make connections you need to put yourself out there and meet other artists in your community. Community is so important for artists, it gives us resources for practical advice, potential galleries and clients, and most importantly artistic inspiration. So basically, work as hard as you can and talk to everybody!”