“I am interested in atmospheric space and a constantly changing vista. These interests fuel the inquiry in which I have been involved for the past 23 years: the use of natural light, captured and inflected, as my primary material. In that time, these works have gone gradually from being somewhat translucent and heavily constructed, to being nearly completely transparent, and appearing to float upon the wall. In my pieces that are as much light sculpture as painting, the viewer is presented with the opportunity to directly experience the scientific truism that the only constant is change. Striving to maximize my medium’s literal transparency in order to attain the greatest self-illumination, natural light is as essential to me as any other material I employ; it literally animates my work with its ever-changing nature.”
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Heather Hutchison was born in 1964 in Philomath, Oregon and raised between Oregon and just north of the Mexican border in Southeastern Arizona. Cindy Moore writes in NY Arts Magazine: “More akin to the simplified beauty of James Turrell…these panels consist of simplified planes in translucent hues…that appear to capture the alchemical reaction between light and color. Hutchison's paintings are impossible to experience through reproductions. No matter how skilled the photographer, they cannot be captured in a fixed moment. The work is responsive in a way alien to traditional painting; as the light shifts so does the hue. These paintings demand an active perception and in the process, they make transparent the act of looking.”
Since her debut in 1989 at the Bess Cutler Gallery in New York, Hutchison’s visual line of inquiry into light and transparency has led to multiple solo and group exhibitions, most recently with Margaret Thatcher Projects. Heather is the recipient of a 2012 Pollock Krasner Grant and a 2011 Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Individual Artist Grant. Her work has been exhibited in the Corcoran Biennial, Brooklyn Museum, Otis College of Art and Design, Knoxville Museum of Art and the Montclair Art Museum. Select public collections housing include the Hammer Museum, Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian, Harvard University and Art in Embassies, Beijing, China.
