Art, Artists, Events

Mary Heebner’s Intimacies/Intimismos

The average human is composed of 70% water, while the rest is a consortium of minerals. In the case of artist Mary Heebner, this alchemy is conveyed through lush, ethereal depictions of the human body. Her latest exhibition, Intimacies/Intimismos, invites the viewer to imagine the beautiful, often tumultuous relationship between humans and the earth, and also bridges the painted figure with the written and spoken word.

Born and raised in the Los Angeles, Heebner came from a family of musicians, but found her love for painting at an early age. She attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, and has made the city of Santa Barbara her home for over 30 years.

Married to photographer Macduff Everton, Heebner has been his companion in their travels around the world, and uses the traditions and aesthetics of the ancient cultures she encounters to inform her own painting. Working on the floor of her studio, Heebner approaches her painting aerially from all angles, using her hands to develop a close connection with large sheets of rough-hewn paper she uses in her work. Drawing inspiration from the “Anonymous Ancients,” or prehistoric art seen on cave walls or fashioned from bone and stone, Heebner roots her painting in the earthly connection between the present and past.

Heebner’s work from her travels in Chile has strongly informed her current exhibition. She has visited Chile over a dozen times, and has also developed a strong connection with the poetry of Chile’s most famous poet, Pablo Neruda. After several visits to Chile, Heebner created a series of paintings inspired by Neruda’s Isla Negra home and the Pacific Ocean. She showed these to preeminent Neruda scholar and translator Alastair Reid, suggesting a collaboration. This became a bilingual limited edition artist’s book, titled “On the Blue Shore of Silence: Poems of the Sea by Pablo Neruda.”

With Reid’s assistance, Heebner was soon introduced to Patricia Cepeda, the wife of U.S. Ambassador to Chile, John O’Leary. Cepeda encouraged a trade version of this rare book, and took Heebner’s prototype to Harper Collins, who published it in 2004 in honor of Neruda’s Centennary. In 2007, Heebner again collaborated with Reid for Intimacies/Intimismos, a book pairing Heebner’s “Muse” series with Neruda’s poems of love. This latest collection of paintings is included in her current exhibition.

Heebner’s work effectively synthesizes her esteem for the earth and the cultures that are borne from it, and also offers a strong literary narrative using Neruda’s poetry.

“The inspiration for this exhibit is twofold,” said Heebner. “It explores the connection between figure and ground, that we literally carry landscapes within us. Second, the exhibit is animated by the exchanges between word and image – poetry and painting illuminating one another.”

Intimacies/Intimismos visually explores Neruda’s presentation of love through Heebner’s delicate, yet powerful display of male and female nudes that appear writhing, dancing and remaining distinctly still within the swirling spirit of nature. Using a palette of watercolor, shimmering copper pigment, graphite and acrylic, Heebner imbues each drawing with a tactile, skin-like effect. A warm palette of Copper, Ochre and Rose offers abstract renderings of the human form, as seen through the seductive lens of Neruda’s poetry.

Marie Arana, Book Critic at the Washington Post says the following of Heebner’s work:

Heebner’s nudes, rendered on handmade paper in watercolor washes are at once grounded and fragile. Like Neruda’s poetry, they relay what Heebner calls the ‘naked, exposed, and vulnerable’ aspects of love.

In the end, Heebner’s work seeks connection with the world’s oldest made things and materials from which they are shaped. It is this connection that brings the viewer to an understanding of the eternal marriage of nature and human experience. It also points to the importance of documenting and preserving human history through visual art, evoking a modern cave painting.

Additional Information: The exhibition is sponsored by El Consulado de Chile, the Chilean Trade Commission and ProChile, in celebration of the country’s 200th anniversary. Due to the recent earthquake in Chile, the gallery and the artist will give a percentage of all sales of paintings and books to earthquake relief and will be accepting relief donations through the exhibition’s closing on April 17.

In conjunction with the exhibition, there will be a bilingual poetry from both books with Mary Heebner and Latin American scholar Enrico Mario Santi on Saturday April 3rd from 4-6p.m. To RSVP, please e-mail ali@caapr.com or call 323.525.0053.

For more information about Mary Heebner’s exhibition and events, visit www.edwardcella.com or www.maryheebner.com.