Meet the Artist: Heather Hutchison, abstract painter

Heather Hutchison comes from a long line of visual artists; her father, an itinerant caricaturist, traveled with the family throughout the expansive land, sea and sky-scapes of California, Oregon and Arizona.  She spent her formative years in Bisbee, AZ, which in the late 1960s and early 70's was a refuge for other visionaries: visual artists, musicians and people in film.  She had inspiring relationships with many of these artists and as a young person she was allowed independence and her own studio space.  These formative years profoundly shaped her ideas about color, space, light and artistic practice.  Hutchison continued her artistic practice in the real worlds of San Francisco and New York, particularly near the water, where she was always captivated by light, the creation of atmospheric space and a constantly changing vista.  Her studios near or, in one case, on the water allowed her to observe the flowing water and blocks of sky as they changed throughout the day.  Thus began the inquiry she has been involved in for the past 23 years, using natural light as her primary material.  Over the years her works have gone gradually from being somewhat translucent and heavily constructed to being nearly completely transparent and appearing to float on the wall. Utilizing the transparent properties of plexiglass and beeswax as well as natural light captured and inflected, Hutchison's reductive constructions are as much light sculpture as painting.  See her work at www.heatherhutchison.com.

Between Balance & Unbalanced
42 x 42 x 3.5 inches
Plexiglass, enamel, beeswax, pigment, birch ply

Sea of Change
30 x 61 x 2.5 inches
Plexiglass, enamel, beeswax, pigment, birch ply