Caroline Otis Heffron lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She earned her BA in Studio Art from St. Lawrence University, where she was awarded The Frederick Remington Prize, and holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts.
Heffron’s multidisciplinary practice spans figurative oil painting and ceramics, connecting historical and contemporary cultural symbols with women’s body language in stacked, surrealistic compositions through a distinctly female gaze.
Her recent exhibitions include Phantom Body at Gloria’s Project Space, New York, and Plexiglass Proscenium, an online exhibition with Paradice Palase. Additional exhibition highlights include Kent State University, Long Island University, La MaMa Galleria, and Gowanus Open Studios, where her work received a recommendation from Hyperallergic.
As a curator, Heffron has organized projects such as Objects of Desiring at SPRING/BREAK Art Show and Pearls of Wisdom at Studioninedee, NYC. She is also the founder of @artistsconnectedprojects, an initiative bringing artists together through shared inspiration and connected themes.
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.