Questions about the artwork, purchasing, or shipping?
Show Yourself
Heather McPherson
- Painting on paper in epoxy, tape, oil, and acrylic paint
- 2023
- 12" x 10"
"Overlapping experiences of being bound, caught, or controlled: a drawing of a Roman statue of Pan with hands bound, a cropped image of a demon paw dangling a person upside down, taken from Bosch. Just as the paper is physically trapped in the epoxy, the figure is pictorially contained by spikey brackets. In counterpoint, the ephemerality of the soaked paper and organic, seeping left edge of the painting evoke openness, and the painted face smiles with sweet, demented optimism: finding the secret side door out of conditions of confinement."
- Heather McPherson
Building a contemporary art collection is a lifelong journey that is made more accessible with Testudo. Whether you are just learning about art collecting or have already started your collection, we invite you to talk with us!
Please login to purchase.
Heather McPherson
Born in Ann Arbor, MI; based in Providence, RI
Heather McPherson's approach to painting combines abstraction and figuration while applying a range of materials to create low relief wall-based paintings. Responding to devotional painters with a deep consideration for surface effects, natural light and imagery related to the body, McPherson's low relief paintings merge contemporary and traditional materials to assert a physicality in her paintings.
Unique to McPherson's practice is her process of submerging her paintings on paper into translucent epoxy, allowing the painting to suspend in a dream-like state and challenging the effects of time on archival materials. Once dried, the exterior substrate becomes a secondary canvas for further painting by McPherson. This dynamic process challenges the idea of painting as two-dimensional by integrating visible layers that capture elements of sculpture, collage, and painting all at once, similar to an artifact. McPherson’s artistic process can be understood as a transcription of the ethereal by referencing fleshy bodies and historical iconography and by the unification of text, scrawls, and devotional imagery nestled within each layer.
Her densely packed low relief paintings harness physical qualities that expand the definition of painting while the spatial estrangement of layers remind viewers of duality, namely the material world and the transcendent, or the distance between the body and mind.