Reflections in Art: A Conversation with Oil Painter Heather Heitzenrater
The theme of reflection is prominent throughout Pittsburgh-based figurative oil painter Heather Heitzenrater’s work. Her portfolio is full of expansive worlds celebrating the fantastical and surreal, which are accentuated by her incorporation of the reflective material Mylar into her pieces.
The silver, liquid-like surface of Mylar creates abstract images by forming abnormal shapes and catching vibrant colors, according to Heather, who received her BFA in painting and drawing from Edinboro University in 2015. She says she uses these Mylar reflections “to create a world full of chaos and curiosity that lure the viewer to come closer.”
Heather's use of a variety of shapes and styles of canvases also adds vibrancy to her artwork, which was recently commissioned by Netflix and has been exhibited nationally, including the Erie Art Museum, Westmoreland Museum of American Art, and Baton Rouge Gallery. When she's not painting in her studio, she also instructs figurative workshops at Pittsburgh Center for Arts & Media and is a scenic artist for ScareHouse.
We met up with Heather at the studio she shares with her husband, artist Christopher Boring, at Radiant Hall Studios in Homewood to learn more about her artistic practice.
The below conversation has been condensed for space and clarity.
Your artist statement shares your love of science fiction and fantasy, which definitely comes across in your artwork. Were there any specific stories that got you into this genre?
I always liked fairy tales and things like that as a kid. My mom read me all the Chronicles of Narnia books, and those were my favorite. And my favorite movie growing up was Jim Henson’s The Labryinth, and I feel like that movie is just, like, my whole personality. I always gravitated towards that and science fiction, especially more creepier things as I got older. I got into Twilight Zone and Doctor Who. I love ’80s movies, the campier the better.
I also do scenic paintings for haunted houses and escape rooms, painting the scenes and making things look like wood, rock, or cement. so I feel like a lot of that, especially my newer work is influenced in that, too. So yeah, I just love anything weird.
I love your innovation of working with Mylar. Can you describe more about your process?
Everything starts out with a sketch or an idea, and then I set up a photoshoot. I'll cover the wall in a whole bunch of Mylar – behind the secret wall is my Mylar graveyard, I have rolls of it. So we set it up, and I put colored lights on it, pretty much making a set. And we have my models come in and we experiment with costuming and things like that.
So all of your figures are from a reference?
Yeah, we have this whole photoshoot, take a whole bunch of pictures. It's really fun. They're all people I know or work with. When you take pictures of Mylar, it's such a complicated thing for a camera to shoot, so it really kind of simplifies the shapes a little bit and brings out more colors and more shapes than you do when you just view it.
Plus, when you're looking at Mylar, just like with your eye, it changes so much. It's almost like water. If you just move half an inch, the whole scene changes. A lot of people feel like working from photos are cheating, but it's just a tool.
I also know that photos can kill the color a little bit, they can obscure anatomy. And I know what to look out for. I know what to fix. And I kind of pick and choose what elements I want to paint, if I want to up the color or not. My brain kind of just becomes almost like Photoshop a little bit.
How long did that take to master?
I've been painting Mylar and using this technique for a little over 10 years now. I started it in my junior year of college, and when I first started it, my professors were like, “What are you doing?” I like painting reflections. It started from not being able to paint reflection, and that drove me nuts. So I started painting everything shiny I could find, like bottles and cans and then I was doing underwater things. But at that time, painting people underwater was kind of a fad, and I was, like, I want to do something different but still have that reflective water quality and someone showed me that you can buy rolls of reflective mylar and kind of been that since. It's been 10 years and I'm still finding new ways to paint it and new colors and trying out different techniques.
Learn more at heatherheitzenrater.com.