Heather Stivison

Heather Stivison is an award-winning visual artist whose work has been exhibited in museums, universities, and galleries across the United States and in juried shows in Europe and Asia. She believes in the importance of serving the arts community and her fellow artists. She currently serves as the president of South Coast Artists, Inc. She is an elected Signature Member of the National Association of Women Artists (NAWA) and serves on the Board of NAWA’s Massachusetts Chapter. Stivison is a former museum director, former president of both the New Jersey Association of Museums, and the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums. She is a published author and is currently writing her second nonfiction book. A recipient of a research grant from the Arts & Crafts Research Fund, she has written and lectured on various topics in the field. She is represented at Pleiades Gallery in New York City and by Imlay Gallery on Artsy. Stivison creates her work in Hatch Street Studios, New Bedford, MA.

Artist Statement

The place where I am most comfortable in my drawings and paintings, is standing right on the threshold between abstraction and reality. I often paint recognizable shapes and forms, and sometimes very realistic images that hint at a narrative. These narratives often evolve from my deep connections to environmental causes and social justice issues.

However, it is the colors, forms, and overall mark-making that call to me the most. I am interested in distilling the subjective world into color form and light and seeing how brain responds, and how the visual language of my art “reads.”

There is an ebb and flow in my painting process. I begin by rapidly applying subtle color variations of paint, responding to the paint itself more than rigidly adhering to my preconceived plan. I pour translucent washes, smear thicker layers of viscose paint, scrape lines into the surface, and dab and poke at the surface with rags. When I finally pause, I realize my hands are covered with colors, my palette is a mess, rags and paper towels litter the surfaces where opened tubes and jars of paint are scattered in chaos. This is when I need to sit with the work. To be with it, live with it, to listen to what it is saying.

I find the “disrupted” reality of realism mixed with abstraction offers me new ways of responding to emotions and ideas. I tip the balance between abstraction and reality back and forth as a tool to enter into a new emotional place.