Artist Andrea Joyce Heimer to speak at WWU Nov. 16

Andrea Joyce Heimer, a Northwest-based artist, will present her work in a public lecture on Monday, Nov. 16, from 2 to 3 p.m. in the Old Main Theater on Western’s campus.

The lecture is sponsored by Western’s Department of Art and is free and open to the public.

Born in 1981, Andrea Joyce Heimer is a self-taught painter known for her exploration of the suburban experience, drawing inspiration from the neighborhood mythos of her childhood home in Great Falls, Montana.

Adopted as an infant and plagued by lifelong clinical depression, Heimer struggled early-on with feelings of disconnect from her family and community. Her sense of isolation continued into her teens, but by then she'd found comfort in a peculiar activity: observation.  Through quietly observing the lives around her, Heimer was able to piece together neighborhood tales of madness, conspiracy, and love, often substituting her own theories to fill any missing pieces of the story.

It is fragments of these stories that make up Heimer's darkly imaginative narrative works. Part allegory, part autobiography, her detailed paintings depict scenes of heartbreak, madness, and the emotional claustrophobia that stems from living as an outsider in one's own backyard.

Seattle art critic Matthew Kangas wrote about Heimer’s work, "What is the thin line between fine art and outsider or folk art? Most art critics don’t want to go there, but Andrea Heimer’s show since her 2008 debut … suggests that she may be among those artists who cross over quite easily from her early venues (“tattoo shops, salons, coffee shops, and sidewalk sales”) to the white cube space. Think Henri Rousseau, Ralph Fasanella, Morris Hirschfield and Florine Stettheimer, all of whom had little training but made up for it with big, wonderful ideas. As far as writers go, Flannery O’Connor, Don DeLillo, Shirley Jackson and ex-Seattle-ite Lynda Barry are forerunners of the kind of satirical demolishing of scary suburbia that is Heimer's specialty.”

For more information about Heimer’s lecture, contact Cynthia Camlin, Western Washington University associate professor of Art, at (360) 650-3747 or Cynthia.Camlin@wwu.edu.

Image:

Andrea Joyce Heimer

"Me, Unhinged."

16x18" acrylic/pencil on wood 

2015