Sue Heatley: Southern Exposure

Beginning April 21st , The Drawing Room is pleased to launch an online presentation of new works on paper by Sue Heatley. An illustrated digital catalog with prices is available on the gallery’s website: www.drawingroom-gallery.com. While the gallery remains closed temporarily, we encourage those on the East End to keep an eye on the gallery’s 55 Main Street storefront window for a changing selection of exhibition highlights.

Sue Heatley’s Southern Exposure series explores impressions of place in a spontaneous and delicately balanced abstract language. Over the past thirty years, the tactile qualities of her working materials have been central to a rich studio practice encompassing printmaking, painting and ceramics. For this recent group of mixed media works, the initial catalyst was the artist’s discovery of a cotton rag paper with a warm hue and inviting luminosity. Through her layering of improvised marks, both drawn and painted, Heatley transformed the flat paper surface of each work into a spacious field for the dynamic interplay of imaginative forms.

Amidst ethereal washes that evoke cloud formations, mountain ranges and woven linear grids, bolder dark shapes intervene. Collaged patches of shimmering sandpaper, broad indigo brushstrokes and black acrylic silhouettes provide armatures and ballast that anchor Heatley’s dreamlike compositions. Her rhythmic drifts of pattern conjure topographical maps and weather charts in the translucent palettes of 19th century Japanese woodcuts. Throughout the series, Heatley implements carefully calibrated contrasts between light and dark, delicate and bold, opaque and diaphanous as if splicing together a montage of visceral reverie. Looking back at the work, the artist recognizes allusions to recent sensory experiences: the arc of Richmond’s James River, the open structure of flowering dogwoods and the splendor of Giotto’s 14th century frescos.

 
See below for full press release and selected works.