A Penleaf Profile:

The artist, Julie Heffernan, has an undergraduate degree in painting and printmaking from the University of California, Santa Cruz and a graduate degree in painting from Yale School of Art. Her work is shown at P.P.O.W. Gallery in New York City, Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, as well as in galleries around the United States and abroad. Her work has been featured in numerous publications including Artforum, Art in America, Artnews, and The New York Times. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including grants from the National Endowment of the Arts and the New York Foundation of the Arts, as well as a fellowship from the Fulbright Foundation. She lives and works in New York. The Penleaf is honored to have the honor of featuring this incredible artist:

THE PENLEAF: The work of artist, Julie Heffernan, is magical and layered, beautiful and reaching…full of vision and thought, questions and sight, in both its bridging of exterior and interior worlds and also in how it expands concepts of the "self" in general. For hers are not self-portraits set in stone of fixed figures forever facing back their same reflected oneness, but instead together are works continuously in shift that wear many faces in many forms and speak of the many selves all layered in each self, while consistently speaking in a voice and style so very much her own. For each of us is one and many, and here her story speaks its truths, whether addressing issues of gender or war, femininity or connection, or all the faces within each face… with each piece standing on its own as a world of itself, complete, full, and beautiful, and also standing together as a body of work of tremendous power and reach.

Unlike many titled "self-portraits," Heffernan's subjects are not simply the figures themselves representing the entirety of the framing and story, but instead are everything contained within the frame: from the background and setting, flora and fauna, birds and beasts, light and shadow, signs and symbols - everything on the canvas, in all its layers and detail and complexity, is the self-portrait itself, sometimes bearing a likeness to herself, other times bearing the face of a structure or creature, plant or object instead. And there is incredible magic in this approach and framing of the idea of the self-portrait. For who among us wears just one face, or lives in just one world, or is of just one thing? For we are all so many things to different people or places…different roles and skins and forms and faces…depending on the framing, depending on the world we are walking through at any given moment with all its variables and versions, changing contexts and expectations. And Heffernan addresses this brilliantly through her work. For we are both flesh and at times dead meat. Both man and sometimes beast. Subject and object. Viewer and viewed. Monster and beauty and all that in between. Roots in rise or moth by light to fall. Divided land where from birds fly or place within where we greet ourselves at last as friend. Rooms within the house so large or place in shadows where we feel small. All depending on the framing, depending on the eye, depending on the bridge that her works all bridge so beautifully. Works that will live on long, for sightful and timeless they be, speaking to so much so well…not settling for a simple tale, not settling for a simple frame simply because it's easy. But instead, works bridging forth to larger sight, bridging forth the idea of "I", bridging forth the face to face, bridging forth to we.

 

For more information about the artist and her work, visit P.P.O.W. Gallery at http://www.ppowgallery.com/