Today we’d like to introduce you to Kelsey Anne Heimerman.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
My unique gift to portray visual language has been nurtured and guided by a family of artists since I was 4 years old. Painting is my primary form of thinking as it captivates my mind with its limitless possibilities and consistently produces my innovative work. I studied at UNT and after university opened up a small organic coffee shop. 4 years ago, I quit my day job and opened an independent art studio in Dallas. I was awarded my first museum grant from The Nasher Sculpture Center. The following year I held a self-funded solo exhibition and sold out. This allowed me to stabilize, grow, travel, and calibrate my visual inventory.
I brought even more precious materials into the work, including hand mixed oil pigments, ritualistic hand carved masks, custom framing and 23k gold and silver. Through a dedicated discipline of rigorous studio practice and research, new work consistently enters my studio of both small and monumental scale. I continue to sell independently to art collectors every year breaking my records from before and was able this year to move into a 2000 sq. ft painting studio, with a beautiful skylight and 30-foot-tall ceilings where the work is expanding even further.
Please tell us about your art.
My compositions of portraits, bodies, animals, and archetypal imagery intertwine with abstract patterns that initially captivate the viewer with opulent and color saturated pallets. Expressive mark making adorns provocative figures while globally inspired iconography consumes the juicy surface of gold leaf infused oil paintings. Themes of everyday life, ritual and technology flutter in and out compositions creating visionary worlds that bend the rules of physical reality. The surface is engorged with buttery oil paint as it bleeds and pulls figures, animals and pattern into distorted allegorical or portrait paintings describing the human condition.
Elegant, sometimes androgynous, multi colored human forms are dissolved with warping technological distortions that pull and pixelate to create a hybrid from of human condition. Figures are liberated of gender roles, cultural boundaries, oppressed historical pasts and dramatized sexualization by being represented in new inclusive way. Surrounded by dreamlike environments, dence all-encompassing imagery and textures flood the pictorial space with riotous ornamentation describing the world of maximalist vision and at a deeper look an empathic view towards the struggles of identity.
Do you have any advice for other artists? Any lessons you wished you learned earlier?
#1. Content will inspire the work, make sure you are consistently diving into your modes of interest, philosophy, technology, history, economics, politics, music…. whatever gets you up in the morning, read everything about it. Download audio books while you’re in the studio and consistently continue your education. The art work will grow because of it and so will your knowledge. If you’re doing it right, you are going to be in front of highly educated, rich individuals who might have some power over where your collection is headed, so be ready to embrace those conversations so you can engage in the opportunity.
#2. Learn to save your money early. Sales happen on and off so you have to budget wisely when you’re first getting started. Get a CPA you can trust and ask for financial advice as your collection and collectors grow.
#3. Exercise regularly. The work of an artist can be physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting, not to mention your brain never leaves the “how would I paint that” phase when you’re in the real world so you are never really leaving your job. Yoga has helped me personally tremendously in the studio.
#4 If you really believe your vision is worth something, just keep believing in yourself, you have to work hard and believe in yourself first and slowly the public will catch on. When you feel you can’t go on any further, go and visit the mountains or the ocean… rejuvenate yourself and feed the dream in a different way to grow inspiration.
#5. Be kind and be smart. Pretension only feeds the ego, I always address new clients and galleries with humility and grace and the ones that come aboard my friendship are people who really connect with what I do. Be smart when negotiating new deals, get things in writing and in contract on your terms. Know what you are worth and when it comes to business, treat your art as such. It will take you further in the long run.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
The best way to see the work is up close and in person. People regularly schedule studio visits with me by appointment and see the current collection over tea and conversation. To schedule the gallery number is 817.584.8166 or email KHeimerman@gmail.com. The website is always up to date and limited edition prints as well as my newly published book are available on my website www.KelseyAnneHeimerman.com. I am also on Saatchi art, Facebook, Instagram (@seeKelseyPaint). I have an upcoming exhibition in Dallas at the Dallas Oak Cliff Cultural Center opening on September 8, 5:30-8 pm with celebrity artist Sedrick Huckaby and his student Jose Canepa.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.KelseyAnneHeimerman.com
- Phone: 8175848166
- Email: kheimerman@gmail.com
- Instagram: @seekelseypaint
- Facebook: KelseyAnneHeimerman
Image Credit:
Rachel Marie Heimerman (personal photo)
Getting in touch: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
