Heilmann, Mary
Rompecabeza Uno, 2000
A Californian who has lived in New York since 1968, Mary Heilmann creates abstractions that frequently evoke her home state’s coastal landscape in their vivid colors, organic shapes, and, at times, obliquely referential imagery. Her artworks are as intuitive in their inception as they are precise in their internal logic, conveying dynamic relationships between the edges of their underlying supports, painted lines that converge at all angles, and forms that spread fluidly across their surfaces. Heilmann originally focused on sculpture and ceramics as a young artist, and she has retained physicality as a key component in her longstanding painting practice, often employing shaped canvases or multiple panels.