Although it is true that Heidi studied theology for 2 years in Switzerland—just south of Basel and near the Jura mountain range—she is not *that* Heidi. In fact, she never did have the privilege of meeting either of her grandfathers.
Heidi had a passion for art and design from an earliest age. Her father ran a large painting and exterior/interior decorating company, and from him she received the gift of being able to colour-match anything by eye.
“I love colour. I love beauty. And I love the illusive simplicity of land, sea, clouds and the sky. I like to paint with a freedom to let the subject form as I paint. Several of these pieces have an impressionistic feel, yet are also abstract—but not unattainable or inaccessible. People have commented that that they can’t tell if it is land or water. I like that. I want the viewer to connect with the painting and have their own interpretive experience.”
Heidi has always enjoyed expressing herself through various genres. She began her career as a jewellery designer in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1990, and expanded rapidly, selling her creations in several shops and galleries across Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales.
Subsequently running her business from just outside Vancouver, Canada, she began studying art and design in 1998 at Trinity Western University. Her love for colour, evident in her jewellery endeavours, crossed over into her visual art.
Her current series, Hope Rising, is a narrative representing two genre styles of painting she has been working on for the last decade and a bit. The included pieces from her earlier Land and Sea exhibition show the intensity surrounding the attempt to find peace in the midst of a storm, and then the transition of intensity continues with a flow of simple clouds and light as the viewer is brought into the hope that rises with a focus on illumination and beauty.
The goal of the exhibition is to communicate and encourage hope in everyone who sees the art, and that if they are in a storm—to find peace.
“Covid brought a massively big storm to us as a family. My husband, Paul, was hospitalized in May, 2021 and nearly died 3 times from Covid pneumonia complications. As he recovered over time, and was restored, hope anchored us, and continued to rise. And continues to rise."
Through the medium of oil on canvas in a style of tonal minimalism, Heidi’s method of multiple washes and layers of paint alongside scumbling and rubbing-off techniques, and with much chiaroscuro, her passion is to paint subjects that are both intense and beautiful.
Heidi loves the intensity in nature and creation:
“It can teach us so much, as no human is exempt from the intensity of life—yet some of the most intense experiences of our lives become the most beautiful. Even in the midst of storms and crashing waves, great peace can be present.”
Heidi's simple tonally-minimal palette acknowledges the work of contemporary painters like Richard Whadcock, Janise Yntema, David Sharpe, Jim Seitz, Adriano Farinella, Michael Cameron Marlowe, and Sharon Kingston’s A Year with Rilke series, as well as historical allusions to 19th century British Romantic landscape painter J. M. W. Turner, and nuancing 20th century American Expressionist painter Mark Rothko.
The softness of the sky’s colours metamorphose the mood across the picture plane, as if to say, “look up and don’t give up”. The series’ latter pieces move from gravitas to levitas, beginning with “morning dance”. Things begin to rise toward joyous and hopeful change, contrasting the earlier palette. In the piece entitled “higher still”, the focal point is no longer the water; instead, the vantage point emphatically ascends to phenomena above the earth, with the clouds reflecting the various colours of splayed and woven light.
When Heidi paints, she prays that the Spirit of God would guide her, as she desires to create an atmosphere of peace in and through her art, so that viewers will be touched and experience peace in engagement with her pieces.
“That you will be refreshed with the perspective that, although life can be intense at times, peace is always available to those who know how to find it.”
Presently, Heidi is a full-time spiritual teacher at The River Fellowship, a drummer, a mother of three sons and grandmother of two, living in Langley, British Columbia with her husband of 39 years, Paul.
Recently Heidi returned from two vitalizing sojourns through the south of Ireland, along with an inspiring time in the Côte d’Azur in the French Riviera, both transposed into her current body of work—and intermingled with the crisis of her husband almost dying from Covid pneumonia in the summer of 2021.
“In art, we do not obliterate the darkness. Art is an attempt to define the boundaries of the darkness.”
― Makoto Fujimura, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making
