About the Artist
Heather Abshire is a New York based artist who uses her work to better understand and share her anxieties and depression. From a young age, Heather struggled with poor vision. Her obscured world caused a lot of stress and anxiety for her as a child which carried over into adulthood. When she started creating art, she reinvented this world through abstracting architectural and real world influences, either through paint or collage.
Heather strives to explore how vision affect our reality. How can the physical world affect your mental state?
Most of Heather’s pieces mimic a dream-like state with endless possibilities of where and when. She distorts, extracts and combines her references to a point where the image is identifiable but not specific. By keeping her main concern on the basic structure she’s able to melt the surrounding area and create a new space. Playing with high contrast along with warm and cool tones helps to transform the work but also maintain a sense of depth and tension.
The process of balancing tension and creating a a calming reality helps Heather to better understand and ease her anxieties. Whether it is an escape or a memory, she hopes her work provokes some sort of experience for the viewer and eases those pestering, anxious thoughts for a moment.
Group Exhibitions:
2020 - Brooklyn Waterfront Artist Coalition - "Wide Open II" - Brooklyn, NY
2020 - Plaxell Gallery - "Online Spring Exhibition" - Online
2020 - Site:Brooklyn - "Gesture and Motion" - Brooklyn, NY
2019 - Citi Community Cases - Court Square - Long Island City, NY
2019 - Plaxall Gallery - "Creative Mosaic" - Long Island City, NY
2019 - Site:Brooklyn - "The Freedom of Abstraction" - Brooklyn, NY
2019 - Atlantic Gallery - "LIC @ Atlantic" - New York, NY
2019 - Upstream Gallery - "Small Works Exhibition" - Hastings-on-Hudson, NY
2018 - Plaxall Gallery - "Yours and Always Only Yours" - Long Island City, NY
2017 - Ravel Hotel - "Holiday Market" - Long Island City, NY
2017 - Astoria Wine and Spirits (solo) - "Capacity Building" - Astoria, NY
2017 - Makers Movement - "The Handmade Pop-Up" - Online
2014 - Mahady Gallery - "BFA Exhibition" - Marywood University, Scranton PA
2014 - Wendell and Company - "Advance Painters II" - Scranton, PA
2013 - Connells Loft Gallery - "Decoding Spaces" - Scranton, PA
2011 - Connells Loft Gallery - "Mind the Gap" - Scranton, PA
Curatorial Projects:
2017-2019- MediaMath's Art Collection
Education:
2014- Marywood University - BFA
2014 - Marywood University - Minor in Art History
2013 - European Independent Study - Rome, Italy
2011 - European Independent Study - London, England
Representation:
2018 - Present: Long Island City Artists
