Contemporary painter Julie Heffernan debuts first Oklahoma exhibition, “Infinite Work in Progress”
Julie Heffernan (American, b. 1956), "Budding Boy," 2010, oil on canvas.
Contemporary painter Julie Heffernan debuts first Oklahoma exhibition
The acclaimed artist’s “Infinite Work in Progress,” featuring 20 recent works, opens Wednesday evening at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
“That’s my version of giving myself as I’m painting a movie experience,” Heffernan said in a phone interview. “Movies tell the best stories in contemporary modern life. … It’s debatable but one could say that movies are the popular mode of delivering narrative. And I’m not a moviemaker, but I want to have the richness of that filmic experience. So I try to get it in layers.”
Oklahoma art lovers will get to study the layers of 20 recent paintings when the exhibition “Julie Heffernan: Infinite Work in Progress” opens Wednesday night at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. It is part of the museum’s ongoing “New Frontiers Series for Contemporary Art.”
“Anyone interested in painting should see this exhibition. Julie Heffernan’s show … is mesmerizing and provocative, and a testament to the fact that painting is alive and well in contemporary art,” said Glen Gentele, the museum’s president and CEO, in an email.
Julie Heffernan (American, b. 1956), "Why We Fight," 2010, oil on canvas.
Return trip
The members preview for the show is set for 5 to 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, while the public opening event will run from 6:30 to 8 p.m. The special exhibit “Princely Treasures: European Masterpieces 1600-1800 from the Victoria and Albert Museum” and the inaugural edition of projectscreen, a new monthly video art series, will open concurrently.
Heffernan, 55, will give a lecture about her work at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday. The Brooklyn, N.Y.-based artist will discuss “how I think about narrative in a painting, which is a stilled medium, and kind of a different way to look at figurative painting., in terms that are less sort of straightforwardly iconographical. You know, the art historians’ way of looking at painting is to say, ‘Look at this, this means that and that means that,’ and this is a different way of approaching meaning in figurative art.”
On view through May 13, “Infinite Work in Progress” marks Heffernan’s first exhibit in Oklahoma, but not her first visit to the Sooner State. In 1981, the Illinois native worked for a restaurant design company that devised a high-end Oklahoma City concept restaurant called Crude McFly’s, which filed for bankruptcy about a year after she attended its opening.
“We went to cowboy bars and I learned to two-step and I had a blast,” she said with a laugh. “I loved it. I want to get a chance when I’m there to go two-step.”
Her stint with the restaurant design firm motivated her to go to graduate school and devote herself to painting. She earned her master of fine arts from the Yale School of Art. Her elaborate canvases incorporate elements of magical realism, surrealism and fairy tales.
Her 2010 painting “Budding Boy” sprawls with severed branches, roosting birds and mysterious ladders along with the nude youth of the title cradling a large orb of flora and fauna while perched in a towering tree.
“The thing that keeps me running to the studio every day is what’s gonna happen. … I’ll have an initial — I wouldn’t call it a vision ‘cause that sounds too hoity-toity — something that will pop into my head,” she said.
“I’ll sketch in the first incarnation of ‘guy in tree’ and then unspools over time — if I’m lucky — the reason he’s in the tree, what he’s doing in the tree, how he feels in the tree, what the tree is like, what the tree inhabits or what inhabits the tree. Just everything that is the story then happens, and I do the thing like a writer does, the visual equivalent of listening for the voices. You know, writers talk about that, and for me, the painting at a point will tell you what to do.”
Julie Heffernan (American, b. 1956), "Millennium Burial Mound," 2012, oil on canvas.
Contemporary concerns
Heffernan’s paintings make stylistic nods to Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo artwork. While the mother of two teenage sons incorporates those historical references, her works, especially the recent ones, address contemporary concerns.
“It’s very interesting to see the kind of films that filmmakers make once they have kids. They’ll often make art that is more socially conscious, and I think that’s kind of what’s going on,” she said.
“The older I get, the more concerned I get that we solve the problems of our world — environmental, political, war and all that — and all I can think is that it’s an infinite work in progress. And if we can at least keep our planet alive, maybe we have a chance of getting somewhere within this infinite work in progress.”
ON EXHIBIT
“Julie Heffernan: Infinite Work in Progress”
When: Through May 13.
Where: Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive.
Opening events: Members preview, 5 to 6:30 p.m. Wednesday; artist lecture, 5:30 p.m. Wednesday; public opening, 6:30 to 8 p.m. Wednesday.
Information: 236-3100 or www.okcmoa.com.
-BAM