Julie Heffernan, Self-Portrait with Lock, 2018, oil on canvas, 68" x 58"
Unravelling before you, ribbons spill out of canvas, each strip detailed with fragments of history and memory. They flow towards your feet, bringing the viewer into the world the artist creates. A woman, holding this unravelling bundle in her arms, gazes at you, steady and unflinching, as if she is the keeper of these stories. This is no simple self portrait; it is a meeting with time, with history, and with the weight of what women carry in their arms.
Julie Heffernan, Self-Portrait with Anna, Katherine, Liz and Barbara, 2018
Julie Heffernan has long been re-imagining the role of women in art. Brought up in the Catholic faith, she moved from Illinois to San Francisco as a young girl. Being surrounded by historical imagery and religious iconography influenced Heffernan’s art; but instead of recreating these stories, she rewrites them. Her canvases piece together the iconography of classical art with that of feminism and societal expectations. She twists these stories into something new—something that celebrates the strength and autonomy of the female body, rather than objectifying it.
“I had been defining myself as a feminist my whole adult life,” she explains, “so when I discovered that I was actually engaging an idea of feminine form, not just content, I was very excited about that. That has to do with something I describe as ‘telling the story in the form of the painting itself.’ “ In Heffernan’s eyes, feminism is not decorative—it is personal, inseparable from her own body, history, and imagination.
Julie Heffernan, Self-Portrait with Anna, Katherine, Liz, and Barbara (first version), 2018, oil on canvas, 30”x 26”.
Heffernan’s work, Hunter Gatherer, is a feminist manifesto dedicated to the courageous women who have talked back to patriarchal authority throughout history. Within the context of all the rich imagery gleaned from her Catholic upbringing, Heffernan’s paintings are an homage to empowered women. The paintings in Hunter Gatherer pay tribute to female revolutionaries in individualized portraits, which hang on the walls behind the nude central female figure, a stand-in for Heffernan.
Heffernan self-consciously strips herself of her “feminine” or alluring qualities, wreaking havoc on the tradition of the classic nude. Heffernan presents herself as an empowered female figure who, like the caryatids of Ancient Greece holding up a temple, stand guard, and protect, the heroines behind them.
Julie Heffernan
Born: 1956, Peoria, Illinois Lives and Works: Brooklyn, New York Education: Masters of Fine Art, Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT; Bachelors of Fine Art, University of California, Santa Cruz Exhibitions (selected): 2023 - HIRSCHL & ADLER MODERN, New York, NY; 2020 - Hot Heads, catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, CA; 2018 - Hunter Gatherer, P.P.O.W., New York, NY; 2017-18 - When the Water Rises; traveling survey of recent paintings: Louisiana State University Museum of Art; Baton Rouge; Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art; Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University; 2016 - Waters Rise, Catherine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, CA Awards, Grants, and Artist Residencies (selected): 2012 - MacDowell Fellowship, Peterborough, NH; 2011 - Inducted as Academician, National Academy of Art, New York, NY