Sue Heatley: Paintings

From October 20 through November 26, The Drawing Room is pleased to present an exhibition highlighting dynamic new paintings by Sue Heatley that extend her abstract visual language in a fresh and assertive direction. Heatley’s exploration of the physicality of different mediums has been central to her thirty-year studio practice, which has encompassed printmaking, ceramics and painting. Recently, her pivotal shift to working directly on linen with opaque, fast drying pigments has fostered an immediacy in her process that influenced the genesis of the bold and labyrinthine paintings on view. Several earlier works on handmade paper that combine monotype and linocut printing with collage and gouache brushwork allow viewers to trace the evolution of her newest imagery and the impact of her choice of materials.

In making her new paintings on the textured linen, Heatley embraced the challenge of working without preliminary studies. Within each animated picture field, brightly colored biomorphic forms and their stark white counterparts converge and intersect in interlocking configurations silhouetted against the neutral background. Layered over the voluptuous yet flat opaque shapes, clusters of black dots and sinuous linear patterns introduce a sense of motion and spatial depth. Pentimenti of earlier brushwork and delicate traces of pencil and ink add subtlety. Titles such as Pink Rumble, Archer and Getaway underscore the inexplicable hint of anthropomorphism and ebullient energy that imbue Heatley’s graphic paintings.

See below for full press release and selected works.