paula heisen: light, and time

Exhibition Dates: april 27 – may 22, 2021

Reception: Thursday, april 29, 5pM - 8pm

Light, and Time, a show of paintings and drawings by Paula Heisen, will open in The Painting Center’s Project Room on April 27, 2021. The title refers to the passage of time in the landscape, and how that landscape is etched by the movement of sun and shadows.

The exhibition features pieces from the last four years, done in the Schoharie valley in New York’s Catskill Mountains. A perceptual painter, Heisen develops each work with on-site drawings and color studies – painting the larger version in the landscape, and often resolving its final stages in the studio. She thinks of paintings as “mechanisms”: compositions that draw on painting tradition and color theory to create vivid summations of lived experience. Though small in scale, the works have an intense presence.

Heisen has been painting in the Catskills for almost 40 years: “Though I know this landscape well, I always allow myself to be surprised by something as I hunt for an image – the way the light falls on a tree, or the vista that opens up when I turn a corner. It’s like the flash of a deer’s tail in the woods – I see it, remember it and strive to embody that sensation in the final painting. My deep love for this area closely connects me to this work.”

A graduate of the Yale School of Art MFA program, Heisen has exhibited her artwork throughout the United States, with solo exhibitions in New York, Pennsylvania and Texas. Among the grants and awards she’s received are an Elizabeth Foundation Grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts grant, a Joan Mitchell Emergency Grant and an Ingram Merrill Foundation Grant. She has taught at FIT (NYC), Lehman College (Bronx, NY), Oxbow Summer Program (Michigan), Yale University’s Summer Program (New Haven, CT) and at UC Santa Barbara.

For more information, visit: www.paulaheisen.com.

View interview with Painting Center member Sue Collier and guest artist Paula Heisen, moderated by Jo Ann Rothschild, is available at: https://vimeo.com/544682819