BIOGRAPHY

Caroline Otis Heffron lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Heffron received her BA in Studio Art from St. Lawrence University where she received The Frederick Remington Prize. In addition, her undergraduate degree included a semester in Florence for Art History with Syracuse University. She has pursued painting and ceramics since graduating with her MFA from the School of Visual Arts. Recent exhibitions include group shows, “Phantom Body” at Gloria’s Project Space in New York and “Plexiglass Proscenium” online exhibition with Paradice Palase. Highlights of her curatorial work includes “Objects of Desiring” at SPRING/BREAK and “Pearls of Wisdom” at Studioninedee, NYC. Other exhibitions include Kent State University, Long Island University, La Mama La Galleria, and Gowanus Open Studios with a recommendation from Hyperallergic. She is the founder of @artistsconnectedprojects which brings artists together through inspiration and connected art themes. Her figurative oil painting and ceramics connect historical and contemporary cultural symbols with women’s body language in stacked compositions through a surrealistic female gaze.  

STATEMENT

My paintings are inspired by comparing images of women from art history and my street photography with cultural symbols. I begin a transhistorical conversation by combining and layering figures in an unguarded vignette with themes found in decorative arts and architecture that highlight the imagination. These archetypal personas represent women like me: wanderers, collectors, and creators who reflect my dualistic experiences of belonging yet feeling isolated, being vulnerable yet needing to be strong, and remembering to be present but longing for the future.

I compose traditional and contemporary figures with an overabundance of ornamental objects. The remixing of animate and inanimate images reclaims and retells an open narrative of the patriarchal telling of myths, women workers and women as consumers of culture. The compositions have a lack of spatial depth and include uncanny saturated colors that are combined to highlight the invented worlds of time travel and the personal introspection of these new muses as they ponder their memories, anxiety and desires.

 My paintings evolve into a theatrical tableau formed into a manageable scale and focused moments for consideration as these figures walk along beside me in connected choreography.