Art Commentary By: Yiwen Fu

P.P.O.W Gallery Julie Heffernan | Hunter Gatherer 535 W 22nd St, New York, NY 10011 Julie Heffernan | Hunter Gatherer Sept. 06- Oct. 06

Self-Portrait with the Daughters, 2018, oil on canvas •realistically rendered •fantastical imagery •religious(?) •dominant female lead (figures in the background) recurring (symbol?) •significance of imagery on the scroll •richly pigmented colors •cool tone •angelic glow/ghost-like •blurry portraits in frames in the background (significance?) •selective detail: finish/unfinished •subliminal imagery

Biography Julie Heffernan •Painter •Born: 1956 (age 61-62), Illinois •Spouse: Jonathan Kalb (theater critic and professor) •Education: University of California, Santa Cruz, Yale University •BFA in painting and printmaking, MFA in painting “A new kind of history painting” -Rebecca Solnit “ironic rococó surrealism with a social-satirical twist” -The New Yorker Rococó: (of furniture or architecture) characterized by an elaborately ornamental late baroque style of decoration prevalent in 18th-century Continental Europe, with asymmetrical patterns involving motifs and scrollwork.

Background •Raised in Northern California as a Catholic, which influenced the theme of figurative imagery in her works •Her pieces of artwork have a fantasy like feeling but has a metaphorical meaning behind them talking about issues that are happening around the world •Interested in how the culture she was born into has developed a shared collective unconscious through all that powerful or subliminal imagery that we first encountered as children and that has been accumulating in our mental landscapes over a lifetime “That vast trove of images, from Old Master paintings to film stills to porn imagery, has worked on us our whole lives – telling us stories, scaring us, titillating us, even modifying our behavior -- to define and shape who we are at this particular moment in history.”- Julie Heffernan

A mix of genres and styles, combining allegory, portraiture, history painting, and still life, while in title they are all presented as “self-portraits”.

The festoonery of the scrolls curling down onto the floor and •Current works deal with the concept of memory as it is captured in that kind of powerful, shared imagery that undergirds our experience of culture and its relationship to history. A central female figure bears (and bares) scrolls, the imagery on the scrolls revealing fragmented moments from history and mass media The festoonery of the scrolls curling down onto the floor and around her feet suggest the twisting and twisted nature of how we experience that onslaught of imagery that makes up our culture “Female figures as bearers of culture have permeated human history, from the caryatids of ancient Greece to 19th century Beaux Artes statues of Woman as Virtue. The nude central figure in my paintings gives a nod to the trope of Woman as keeper of tradition.” “Behind her is a portrait gallery of great women who took on power structures and, by their activism, either sowed the seeds of or wrought great changes in the world, women like Rachel Carson, Anita Hill, Jane Goodall, Julia Butterfly Hill, Tarana Burke and many more.” -Heffernan, 2018

My work inspired by Julie Heffernan

Works Cited Art Works For Change. (n.d.). Julie Heffernan. Retrieved October 15, 2018, from https://www.artworksforchange.org/portfolio/julie-heffernan/ Heffernan, J. (n.d.). Julie Heffernan. Retrieved October 15, 2018, from http://www.julieheffernan.net/statement Mark Moore Fine Art. (n.d.). Julie Heffernan. Retrieved October 14, 2018, from http://www.markmoorefineart.com/artists/julie-heffernan