Julie Heffernan: The swamps are pink with June

J ulie H effernan

f oreword Self-Portrait as Continental

Divide , 2022

We are proud to present The swamps are pink with June , Julie Heffernan’s début solo exhibition with Hirschl & Adler Modern. Drawn from Emily Dickinson’s poem about renewal and rebirth in Spring, Heffernan’s chosen exhibition title says as much about the artist as it does about the paintings themselves.

Familiar are the artfully staged, surreal, and psychological worlds inhabited by her female protagonists. Masterful confections of allegory and history painting delight and bewilder with deliberate and symbolic nods to the canons of art history: Northern Renaissance, Hieronymus Bosch, Baroque, Rococo, and Hudson River School.

But in these new works, intricate details spring forth from a ground of spilled paint and bold blotches of color, highlighting a renewed sense of urgency and passion in her work. Climate activism, feminism, identity, and lineage remain major themes of Heffernan’s career and here they emerge as fresh, thought-provoking, and more relevant than ever. These paintings remind us that, despite Winter’s best efforts, Spring will always arrive, and for those who keep “an Orchis’ heart—The swamps are pink with June.”

At Hirschl & Adler, we thank Eric Baumgartner for his photography, as well as the entire team for their support. We congratulate Julie on this exhibition, and are grateful for the time, effort, thoughtfulness, and passion she has “poured”—both literally and figuratively—into these inspired new paintings.

SHELLEY FARMER Director, Hirschl & Adler Modern

TED HOLLAND

All these my banners be.

I sow my pageantry

In May—

It rises train by train—

Then sleeps in state again—

My chancel—all the plain

Today.

To lose—if one can find again—

To miss—if one shall meet—

The Burglar cannot rob—then—

The Broker cannot cheat.

So build the hillocks gaily

Thou little spade of mine

Leaving nooks for Daisy

And for Columbine—

You and I the secret

Of the Crocus know—

Let us chant it softly—

“t here is no more snow! ”

To him who keeps an Orchis ’ heart—

The swamps are pink with June.

e mily d ickinson

1830–1886

Self-Portrait as Hourglass , 2022

hirschl & adler modern: There is an obvious and deliberate use of self-portraiture in your work, and there always has been. When repeated at length, like over the course of a career, it is interesting to me how quickly I disassociate you, as an individual, from the protagonist in your paintings. For me, your likeness becomes a proxy for the viewer, a stand-in. Was this intentional from the start? Or did you start out with the aim of contextualizing your themes solely through a subjective body, namely your own?

julie heffernan: Everything we do is self-portraiture, don’t you think? That said, I have a kind of love / hate relationship with my female figures. I’ve never really wanted her to be so dominant, because it’s the world-building I do that interests me most. On the other hand, I grew up with pictures of saints on holy cards I’d carry around with me in my pockets; they were there behind the Bandaids and Merthiolate whenever I opened our medicine chest—St. Lucy holding her eyeballs; Saint Agnes, her breasts on a plate; and so weird, so different from all the girls/women I knew in the boring suburbs where I grew up. Their stories were all about quiet control, devotion , internal power, qualities I needed to drink in since I wasn’t getting that in the movies or TV back then (except maybe the Flying Nun!).

We make the kind of art we want / need to see and I needed to see strong women looking back at me. But they aren’t me; they’re stand-ins, yes, for all women (or maybe just the really pale ones) and also totally necessary to the overall functioning of the painting, acting as an entry point into it. Essentially she’s a host, inviting viewers into the world around her to come in, look around, commune, hang out, maybe even feel better for it. And when I don’t have her I miss her centrifugal energy, the way she keeps my

eye whirling around, zipping behind and in front of her, but always coming back to her. A center of gravity.

That said, I do sometimes use my own features, but that’s only to get a nose right or see how a neck meets a jaw. And usually I have some portrait I’m obsessed with right next to me—like Velazquez’s Philip IV or Ingres’ self-portrait—that functions both as a way to solve those kinds of practical needs and gives me a surrogate self to imagine myself inside of.

hirschl & adler modern: I like this idea of being welcomed into your paintings. Usually the idea of a self-portrait feels exclusive to me—the artist painting themselves for their own sake. Knowing that the figure is a stand-in removes that exclusivity, despite “Self-Portrait” often being referenced in the paintings’ titles. If anything, the titles’ misdirection only makes the allegorical nature of the work more apparent. Do you think of your paintings as allegories?

julie heffernan: Can’t say I do, but maybe I’m just kidding myself. Do you think they’re allegories?

I’m always calling them “metaphorical equivalents” of my own interiority, like there’s a tiny mirror inside my brain, and it’s moving around, showing me stuff I might be interested in and maybe even want to paint sometime. Ever since I started seeing stuff inside my head over 30 years ago, that “image streaming” process I’ve talked about a lot, I’ve wanted to figure out how to show what’s inside me in a coherent way. That’s the real reason I started calling each painting “Self-Portrait as…”, because they were giving me ways to see myself better, be a conduit to the inside self and act like a kind of mirror—only an interior one—showing me stuff I was way more interested in than what I ever got from my reflection in glass.

For that reason I’ve never liked the kind of surrealism that’s just weird for weird sake, or loosey-goosey in a way that isn’t articulate. Those images are like crystallized experience, almost iconic reformulations that are succinct and poetic and function, for me, sort of like individual memes, compressing what I care about into bite-size portions. They’re why I paint, what I want to bring back to life through forms in my paintings.

hirschl & adler modern: I think we may be talking about the same thing just with different terms. I think of them as allegories in that there are elements which mean something specific, or connote something deliberately, and that we are to put them together in order to understand the painting. Your metaphorical equivalent sounds similar to me: the paintings reflect different things that you are thinking about and those themes and ideas are expressed in your paintings in this specific way. The key nuance is how the paintings reflect your brain. As you said, while the figure may be a stand-in, we are still looking at a self-portrait. I want to focus on the stuff that is moving around inside your brain. Can you talk more about your “image streaming” process?

julie heffernan: Well, it started when I was in Berlin on a Fullbright Scholarship in the late 80s, just before the Wall came down (missed it—dang!). I went there because I wanted to be a Neo-Expressionist like Jörg Immendorf or Markus Lüpertz, and I was really getting into it, making really big paintings full of thick black paint and all about our f’ed up society. I’d finish each painting, thinking it was great, but then the next day find that I couldn’t look at it anymore. Kind of hated it. And that kept happening, over and over again.

But one day, after about 6 months of that painting-hating thing, I lay down on the couch for a quick snooze after a long work day, and, just as I was about to nod off, a bunch of pictures, one after another, started bodying forth into my head, each one crisp and particular and something I’d never seen before, really wanted to look at, long and hard (unlike those paintings I was doing!). Some were really weird, like a baby Infanta giving birth to another baby Infanta, some just faces (tons of faces!)—all streaming fast through my head, like individual film stills from a movie I’d never seen. And it kept happening, to the point that I realized I’d tapped into something that might solve my painting-hating problem. So I taught myself to paint differently, more realistically, and work quickly so I could jot some of them down before I forgot them. It took me a while to figure out how to use them right but finally I stumbled on the humble still life, and started using the image-streaming pictures like mini projections onto the apples and pears that, later on, I thought of as stand-ins for my brain.

Spill (Thorn Apple) , 2022

hirschl & adler modern: At what point did the stand-ins become a female figure? Can you tie that change with any change in what you were trying to say or do in your work?

julie heffernan: Yes—which brings up yet another story, if you don’t mind. All the image streaming / still-life stuff was happening at the same time that my first child, Oliver, was born, so the paintings became about all the new stuff happening in my life: new person, new way of painting, new way of seeing / becoming / moving through the world with multiple selves, etc. Then, a year later, things went awry: abdominal cramps (pregnant? miscarrying? Let it take its course , I think; only thing to do), which became like jackhammers. Next thing I know I’m hobbling to Methodist Hospital where they diagnosed an ectopic pregnancy (pregnancy in fallopian tube: if it ruptures you can die, like from a burst appendix) and removed one of my fallopian tubes.

I was recovering in the hospital with a big bandage on my groin, wondering why I’d never heard the term “ectopic pregnancy” before, wondering why my doctors hadn’t mentioned it as a possibility, and suddenly felt, in one fell swoop, like I’d joined the

Self-Portrait with Sanctuary, 2022

Self-Portrait as Infanta Maria Theresa

Playing Coriolanu s , 1995

Oil on canvas, 52 x 60 in. Courtesy of the artist

ranks of all those women who, through no fault of their own, had suffered reproductive mishaps; all the women who’d died in childbirth. I was floating among them now, alive because of modern medicine, but identifying with them nevertheless, in a way I never fully had before. Suddenly it was real—Lived Feminism was knocking at my door, not just theoretical feminism—and was offering me a way to understand the Life and Death nature of women’s experience: reproductive, political, situational, etc. With change thrust upon us we have to change (take note, climate deniers! ), therefore my work had to change, too. So, I made a painting with a naked woman in an Infanta wig and a bandage on her belly and called it Self-Portrait as Infanta Maria Theresa Playing Coriolanus , from the Shakespeare play about wounds of Glory vs. Shame, and that's how all my ladies were born.

hirschl & adler modern: It is interesting to me that your work, even in the Berlin days, has always been political, but the biggest change happened when you directed that agency through your own life experience. Looking at your paintings with the benefit of hindsight, the work and its agency only strengthened as you continued to expand your visual language. Along with ideas of identity and Feminism, another major theme in your work is the environment: specifically, society’s treatment of it. When did this concern enter the paintings?

Camp Bedlam , 2016

Oil on canvas, 68 x 104 in. Courtesy of the artist

julie heffernan: I still clearly remember, back in 2005, reading Elizabeth Kolbert’s “Climate of Man, Part 1” in The New Yorker and knowing, deep inside, that everything had changed, everything was different now. There was no escaping it: the bill for all our centuries of waste, overkill, depredation had come due and we have to pay, now. So I thought and thought about what I could do and decided it was time to stop my inner-looking and start looking outside myself. I made a body of work called When the Water Rises and it traveled to several red states. The first venue was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and they’d just had yet another storm-of-the-century. Whole neighborhoods were flooded and, afterwards, a ton of waterlogged mattresses had been put out to pasture on sidewalks all over town. In my show was a big diptych called Camp Bedlam that featured a new kind of habitat made of, interestingly, a ton of trashed mattresses, all piled up into shelters.

The point of the show was to engage with a whole lot of different people and start conversations that I hope are still going on.

hirschl & adler modern: I think that the conversation, if anything, has only gotten louder and broader in the time since When the Water Rises opened in 2018. Climate change is a surprisingly divisive issue, and women’s rights issues have, devastatingly, increased rather than decreased. Have you had to readjust how you address these issues in your work? Or perhaps better phrased, how have these recurring issues forced you to adjust your painting? Is that reflected in this exhibition?

julie heffernan: Yes! And you’re right: since then everything related to those issues has only gotten way more charged, but all I can do is keep painting. That said, in 2019, after more than 40 years of work work work, I lost faith. I still put in time at the studio—old habits and all—but it didn’t feel as purposeful anymore. So, I started writing a graphic novel. At first it was to keep myself busy, but soon I found it was helping me make sense of my entire life. And gradually the process of thinking, writing, drawing started working on me like a tonic, and I found myself running to the Microsoft Paint Program, dinosaur that it is, like I used to run to the studio. Following narrative tendrils leading to realizations, bringing new scrutiny to old events, knitting together otherwise

random memories—all of that let me see my life in fresh and organized ways, as though all of it had somehow been choreographed and it was up to me to just find those steps and dance . And that whole process also brought together some of the basic things I’d always wanted in my paintings: intertwining narratives, art history-derived wisdom, life lessons gleaned through devotion to craft. It also involved so much drawing that my orientation to the goo of paint completely changed.

hirschl & adler modern: How do you mean? Your orientation to the materiality of paint?

julie heffernan: Yes. When I started painting again, now with new energy, I found myself changing everything I used to do. I started pouring paint, setting it loose, layering splashes that pooled into glamorous profusions of color that intrigued me in a brandnew way. The shapes they made captured by accident some of the marvelous qualities I look to trees for—a million details, a zillion pinpoints of light, all those complex intertwining of leaves and branches—that I was always trying so painstakingly to render…

hirschl & adler modern: You are speaking about some of the most recent paintings in the show, what you have called the Spill paintings…

julie heffernan: Yes! After I gave the spills some structure—by carving space into them—they suddenly became even more tree-like: branches appearing; sprouting characters; landscape vignettes becoming worlds within worlds; hidden seed pods, flying things throwing out sparks, gleaming like Christmas trees.

The brilliant thing about composing is that it brings logic to an otherwise haphazard activity, organizing through shape and pattern all the mess we make as we begin something new. And organizing is its own balm, a weird kind of rebirth. I always tell students that they’ll probably need to go through a few crises in the beginning of their careers, and purge —throw out everything they’ve done—on their way to their first mature body of work. Now I know that crisis—and purging—is just a part of living; it’s written into the equation. And so I’m back—building scenarios, designing forms in and with paint, searching out wonders—but now…the swamp is pink with June.

Spill (Climbers) , 2022

Self-Portrait (Lion Birth) , 2022 Oil on canvas, 60 x 52 in.

Illustrated on cover 2

Self-Portrait as Continental Divide , 2022 Oil on canvas, 60 x 52 in.

Illustrated p. 3 3

Self-Portrait as Hourglass , 2022 Oil on canvas, 72 x 60 in.

Illustrated p. 4 4

Self-Portrait as Mad Queen , 2022 Oil on canvas, 96 x 56 in.

Illustrated p. 25 5

Self-Portrait as Throne , 2022 Oil on canvas, 72 x 60 in.

Illustrated p. 8

6

Self-Portrait with Sanctuary, 2022 Oil on canvas, 102 x 76 in.

Illustrated p. 12

7

Spill (Ashdod) , 2022 Oil on canvas, 60 x 54 in.

Illustrated on inside front cover

8

Spill (Climbers) , 2022 Oil on canvas, 58 x 50 in.

Illustrated p. 18

9

Spill (Lotus Emergent), 2022 Oil on canvas, 72 x 54 in.

Illustrated p. 7

10

Spill (Seed Pod) , 2022

Oil on canvas, 46 x 36 in.

Illustrated p. 17

11

Spill (Thorn Apple) , 2022

Oil on canvas, 70 x 55 1⁄ 2 in.

Illustrated p. 11

12

Spill (Laocoön) , 2023

Oil on canvas, 72 x 68 in.

Illustrated p. 21

13

Spill (Birds) , 2023

Oil on canvas, 68 x 56 in.

Illustrated p. 26

14

Spill (The Fall) , 2023

Oil on canvas, 96 x 75 in.

Illustrated p. 22

J ulie H effernan

1956 Peoria, IL

e ducation

1985 Master of Fine Arts, Painting, Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT

1981 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Painting and Printmaking, University of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA

s elected s olo e x H ibitions

2023 The swamps are pink with June , Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York, NY

2020 Hot Heads , Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2019 Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ

When the Waters Rise , Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA [traveled to Clear Lake Art Gallery, University of Houston, Houston, TX]

Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL

2018 When the Water Rises , Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA [traveled to Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA; Mennello Museum, Orlando, FL; Scarfone/Hartley Gallery, The University of Tampa, Tampa, FL]

Hunter Gatherer, PPOW Gallery, New York, NY

2017 In the Garden of Earthly Delights , San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, San Angelo, TX

Slang Aesthetics , Mesa Contemporary Arts Center, Mesa, AZ

When the Water Rises , LSU Museum of Art, Baton Rouge, LA

2016 When the Water Rises , Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Anderson Gallery, Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, MA

Hillman Jackson Gallery, Bard College of Simon’s Rock, Great Barrington, MA

2015 Lima Art Gallery, Ohio State University, Lima, OH

Mark Moore Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2014 Micheal Haas Gallery, Berlin, Germany

Sky is Falling , The Palo Alto Cultural Center, Palo Alto, CA

2013 Sky is Falling , PPOW Gallery, New York, NY [traveled to The Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA]

2012 Mark Moore Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

New Frontiers , The Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, OK

2011 Holding Up , Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, CA [traveled to University Art Gallery, California State University Stanislaus, Turlock, CA]

Megumi Ogita Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

2010 Boy O Boy, PPOW Gallery, New York, NY

2009 Guest Artist for Spring Season, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY

Mark Moore Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2008 Broken Homes , Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Luxe Art Institute, Encinitas, CA

Megumi Ogita Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

2007 Booty, PPOW Gallery, New York, NY

2006 Everything that Rises , Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC [traveled to Columbia Art Museum, Columbia, SC; University Art Museum, University at Albany, State University of New York, NY]

Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, CA

PPOW Gallery, New York, NY

2005 Lisa Sette Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ

Robert Kidd Gallery, Birmingham, MI

2004 Bannister Gallery, Rhode Island College, Providence, RI

Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC

John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI

Peter Miller Gallery, Chicago, IL

Paul Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2003 PPOW Gallery, New York, NY

Herter Art Gallery, Univeresity of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA

LittleJohn Contemporary, New York, NY

2002 The Divine Fruit , James David Brooks Gallery, Fairmont State College, School of Fine Arts, Fairmount, WV

Linda Durham Gallery, Galisteo, NM

2001 Peter Miller Gallery, Chicago, IL

PPOW and Little Contemporary, New York, NY

s elected g roup e x H ibitions

2022 Hospitality Suite , Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami, FL

2021 To Hear and Be Heard , Dowd Art and Art History Gallery, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA

2020 7th Annual Catamaran Art Show, R. Blitzer Gallery, Santa Cruz, CA Painting the Figure NOW III , Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, Wausau, WI

Sit Still: Self-Portraits in the Age of Distraction , Anna Zorina Gallery, New York, NY

Masters of the Universe , Distance Gallery, online

2019 Getting to Know You , Reinberger Gallery, Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH

Environmental Impact , Museum of the North Carolina Arboretum, Asheville, NC

Afflatus , 5-50 Gallery, Long Island City, NY

Dance with Me , Zurcher Gallery, New York, NY

2018

Figurative Moving Forward - The Future of Art: Exhibition of Recent Visiting Artists , Lyme Academy, Lyme, CT

Natural Proclivities , Shirley Fiterman Art Center, Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York, NY

Intimacies and Other Stories , George Segal Gallery, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ

2017

No Man’s Land: A Collection of Works by Contemporary Female Artists , Andrews Gallery, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA

Seeing with Our Own Eyes , Forum Gallery, New York, NY

Objectifying Myself , William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT

Masculine—Feminine , Beall Center for Art and Technology, UC Irvine, Irvine, CA

Et in Arcadia Ego , William Roland Gallery of Fine Art, Cal Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, CA

Separation Anxiety, Project Artspace, New York, NY

2016 @Pussy Power, David & Schweitzer Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

The 105th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art: Threatening Beauty, Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College, Lynchburg, VA

Representing Rainbows , Gerald Peters Presents, New York, NY

Mir ist das Leben Lieber, Weserburg Museum Fur Moderne

Kunst, Sammlung Reydan Weiss, Bremen, Germany

Arcadia , New Museum Los Gatos, Los Gatos, CA More Than Your Selfie , New Museum Los Gatos, Los Gatos, CA

2015 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT , The Art Museum, SUNY Potsdam, Potsdam, NY [traveled to Stauth Memorial Museum, Montexuma, KS; Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art, Moraga, CA]

Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, LA

Wrath: Nature Strikes Back , Wave Hill, Bronx, NY Far, Far and Away, CMA, New York, NY

Eden Eden , Torri Gallery, Paris, France

50/50: Fifty Artists from 5 Decades UCSC Alumni Exhibition, Sesnon Gallery, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA

EXOTICA and 4 Other Cases of the Self, ME Collectors Room Berlin, Berlin, Germany

2014 Play Hard , Terrault Contemporary, Baltimore, MD

Living and Sustaining a Creative Life , Book Event and Exhibition, Aberson Exhibits, Tulsa, OK

Forecast ¸ Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA

EXOTICA and 4 Other Cases of the Self , ME Museum, Olbricht Collection, Berlin, Germany

Women , ME Museum, Olbricht Collection, Berlin, Germany (Detail) , H-Space Gallery, Bangkok [traveled to Transition Gallery, London, UK]

Hyper-Resemblences , Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, NY

Through the Looking Glass , Gateway Project, Newark, NJ

What Does Love Look Like , Friesen Gallery, Ketchum, ID

Women Choose Women Again , Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ

2013 Things Wondrous and Humble, American Still Life , Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC

The Least Orthodox Goddess , Gallery 151, New York, NY

Environmental Impact , Brookgreen Gardens, Murrells Inlet, SC [traveled to Peninsula Arts Center, Newport News, VA; Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA; Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI; The R.W. Norton Art Gallery, Shreveport, LA; Canton Museum of Art, Canton, OH]

Four Women , All Visual Arts, London, UK

Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, NY

2013 Annual , National Academy Museum, New York, NY

2012 Women’s Work , National Academy Museum, New York, NY

Twisted Sisters , Kristen Dodge Gallery, New York, NY

The Perfect Storm , Julie Saul Gallery, New York, NY

The Linda Lee Alter Collection of Art by Women , traveling exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy of Art, Philadelphia, PA

The Calendar’s Tales: Fantasy, Figuration and Representation , 808 Gallery, School of Visual Arts, Boston University, Boston, MA

2011 Land of Magic: Artists Explore Make-Believe , Bedford Gallery, Lesher Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek, CA

Memories of the Future , Maison Rouge, Olbricht Collection, Paris, France

Single Fare 2: Please Swipe Again , Sloan Fine Art, New York, NY

Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation, Mana Art Center, Jersey City, NJ

Acrimboldo-Artistsa Milanese tra Leonardo e Caravaggio , Palazzo Reale, Milan, Italy

Open , Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

Uncovered , Eden Rock Gallery, St. Barthes

2010

The Reflected Gaze–Self Portraiture Today, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA

Surface Tension , South Bend Museum of Art, South Bend, IN

In Canon , Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington, DE

Nice to Meet You , Sloan Fine Art, New York, NY

Private (Dis)play, New York Academy of Art, New York, NY

Eye World , Triple Candie, New York, NY

The Other as Animal , Danese Gallery, New York, NY

2009 Speak for the Trees , Friesen Art Gallery, Sun Valley, ID

Bods: Rethinking the Figure , Robert Kidd Gallery, Birmingham, MI

The Platonic Ideal , Forum Gallery, New York, NY

Epic Painting , Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA

Flower Power, Herter Gallery, University of Massachusetts

Amherst, Amherst, MA

Beyond Appearances , Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx, NY

Signs of the Apocalypse/Rapture , Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL

Forces of Nature , Danese Gallery, New York, NY

Trouble in Paradise , Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ

Private (Dis)play, Center of Creative Arts, St. Louis, MO

Enchantment , Joseloff Gallery, Hartford Art School, University of Hartford, Hartford, CT

A Dog’s Life , Memphis College of Art, Main Gallery, Memphis, TN

The Garden at 2am , Gana Art, New York, NY

Giving Face: Portraits for a New Generation , Nicholas Robinson Gallery, New York, NY

Imaginary Menagerie , Palo Alto Art Center, Palo Alto, CA

Art Connections , George Segal Gallery, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ

2008 Say Good-bye to… , Clifford Art Gallery, Hamilton, NY

The Figure Revealed , Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI

Belle Du Jour, Collette Blanchard Gallery, New York, NY

The 183rd Annual: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art , National Academy Museum, New York, NY

2007 Old School , Hauser and Wirth Gallery, London, England

[traveled to Zwirner and Wirth Gallery, New York, NY]

The Feminist Figure , Forum Gallery, New York, NY

Girly Show, Wignall Museum, Cucamonga, CA

Ultrasonic International II: Transcending Transience , Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

Breaking Ground , Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, CA

The Beholder’s Eye , Salmagundi Club, New York, NY

Transitional Objects: Contemporary Still Life , Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, Harrison, NY

More is More: Maximalist Tendencies in Recent American Painting , Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts, Tallahassee, FL

2006 New Old Masters , National Museum, Gdansk, Poland

20th Anniversary Show, Lisa Sette Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ

Transformative Portraits: Altered Identities in Contemporary Art , Richard A. and Rissa W. Grossman Gallery, Lafayette College, Easton, PA

Figuring the Landscape , Contemporary Art Galleries, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT

Realm of the Spirit , Mike Weiss Gallery, New York, NY

Why the Nude , Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery, The Art Students League of New York, New York, NY

Transitional Objects: Contemporary Still Life , Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY

2005 Mike Weiss Gallery, New York, NY

New Art, New York , Trierenberg Art, Traun, Austria

Social Insecurity, Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, CA

High Drama: Eugene Berman and the Theater of the Melancholic Sublime , Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA [traveled to McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX; Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA]

Paint on Metal , Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ

Claire Oliver Fine Art, New York, NY

2004 Me, Myself and I , University Galleries, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL

Enchantment , Wave Hill, New York, NY

Tang Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY

179th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Art , National Academy Museum, New York, NY

Garden of Earthly Delights , Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA

Exquisite Corpse: Rules for an Unruly Project , Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME

Trouble in Paradise , Van Brunt Gallery, New York, NY

2003

Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

The New VMFA: Collecting for the Future , Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA

Woman on Woman , White Box Gallery, New York, NY

2002 Masquerade , Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI

Social Landscape , PPOW Gallery, New York, NY

Collecting Contemporary Art: A Community Dialogue , Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, NC

American Academy Invitational Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture , The American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY

Snapshot , Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT

Pixerina Witcherina, Wake Forest University Fine Arts Gallery, Winston-Salem, NC

2001 Yale University School of Art Alumni Show, Holcombe T. Green, Jr. Hall, New Haven, CT

Of Dreams and Dreamers , Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago, IL

Pixerina Witcherina , University Galleries, University of Illinois, Normal, IL

2000 Snapshot , Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD

The Swamp, On the Edge of Eden , Samuel P. Harn Museum, Gainesville, FL

American Art Today: Fantasies and Curiosities , The Art Museum at Florida International University, Miami, FL

Nude + Narrative , PPOW Gallery, New York, NY

The Figure: Another Side of Modernism , Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Snug Harbor Art Center, Staten Island, NY

Private Worlds , Art in General, New York, NY

Re-configuring the Heroic , Artemesia Gallery, Chicago, IL

Self-Portraiture , Kwangju Biennale 2000, Kwangju, South Korea

Looking Back, Bard College, Center for Curatorial Studies Museum, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

What Goes Around Comes Around , Katonah Museum, Katonah, NY

Quirky , Adam Baumgold Fine Art, Harrisburg, PA

Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA

Animal Artifice , Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY

s pecial p ro J ects

2021 Painting for Limited Edition Custom Gibson Guitar for lead guitarist of Tool, Adam Jones

Painting reproduced for Recording Everything that Rises by Jeff

Cregeur

2020 Official portrait for Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson

2019 Largescale painting for National Geographic Antarctica Research Ship

s pecial c ollections

Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, AZ

Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC

Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY

Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC

Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA

Damien Hirst’s Murderme Collection, London, United Kingdom

Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, HI

Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN

Louisiana State University Museum of Art, Baton Rouge, LA

McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX

Collectors Room Berlin, Stiftung Olbricht (Olbricht Foundation), Berlin, Germany

McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco, CA

National Academy Museum, New York, NY

New Britain Museum of Art, New Britain, CT

Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL

Palmer Museum of Art, University Park, PA

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, PA

Persis Corporation/Twigg-Smith Collection, Honolulu, HI

Progressive Corporation, Mayfield Village, OH

Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL

Sammlung Reydan Weiss, Obertsdorf, Germany

The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC

Twin Farms, Barnard, VT

University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, IA

Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, VA

Wake Forest University Collection of Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC

Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC

Zabludowicz Art Trust, London, United Kingdom

a wards / r esidencies /H onors

2021 Painting Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts

2017 Meridian Scholar (Studio-F) Artist-in-Residence Fellowship, University of Tampa, FL

Arts Residency Fellowship program hosted by the Camargo Foundation, BAU

Institute, Cassis, France

Featured Artist for 2017 Gala, MacDowell Foundation, New York, NY

2016 Anonymous Was a Woman Award, Nominee

2014 Board Member, National Academy Museum, New York, NY

2013 Milton and Sally Avery Fellow, MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH

2012 MacDowell Fellowship, MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH

Yaddo Fellowship, Saratoga Springs, NY (declined)

Lee Ellen Fleming Artist-in-Residence, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

2011 Inducted as Academician to the National Academy of Art, New York, NY

2010 Commencement Speaker, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA

Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation Distinguished Visiting Painting Fellow, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA

2009 Guest Artist, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY

2008 Thomas Bennett Clarke Prize, National Academy Museum, New York, NY

2004 Thomas R. Proctor Prize, National Academy Museum, New York, NY

2003 National Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, Awarded by Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ

2002 American Academy of Arts and Letters, Nominee

1996 Individual Artists Grant, National Endowment for the Arts

1995 Individual Fellowship Grant, National Endowment for the Arts Fund for Research, Pennsylvania State University

1994 College Faculty Research Grant, Pennsylvania State University

Project Residency Grant, Hillwood Art Museum, New York State Council on the Arts

1990 Painting Fellowship, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME

1987 Artist-in-Residence and Studio Grant, Institute for Art and Urban Resources, PS 1, New York, NY

1986 Fulbright-Hayes Grant to West Berlin/Annette Kade Grant for the Creative and Performing Arts

1985 Prize for Highest Achievement in Painting, Ely Harwood Schless Memorial, Yale University, New Haven, CT

Spill (Birds) , 2023 cat 13

design

Elizabeth Finger

photography

Eric W. Baumgartner

cover

Self-Portrait (Lion Birth) , 2022

Oil on canvas, 60 x 52 in.

inside front cover

Spill (Ashdod) , 2022

Oil on canvas, 60 x 54 in.

THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON , edited by Thomas H. Johnson, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1951, 1955 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © renewed 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1914, 1918, 1919, 1924, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1935, 1937, 1942, by Martha Dickinson Bianchi. Copyright © 1952, 1957, 1958, 1963, 1965, by Mary L. Hampson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

© 2023 Hirschl & Adler Modern

ISBN #978-1-937941-22-2

© 2023 Hirschl & Adler Modern

ISBN #978-1-937941-22-2

H&A