Today we’d like to introduce you to Heather Robinson

Hi Heather, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?

Like an awful lot of artists, I was a creative child, always drawing and collaging, or building little dioramas. I was an academic high achiever, but I wanted to be an artist from a very young age. Around the age of 12, I fixated on becoming an architect – it seemed like something that would please my engineer dad while still allowing me to be creative. I took drafting classes in high school instead of art, and I applied to architecture schools in college. I ended up with an undergraduate in Environmental Design from Texas A&M, and went to MIT for an M. Arch., but dropped out when I realized my heart wasn’t really in the profession after all.

After that, I moved to Austin and transitioned pretty easily to web design – at the time, if you knew Photoshop and could learn basic HTML, you were a web designer! I did that for several years, moving to San Francisco along the way. I had never really stopped doing art (mostly collage) as an outlet and hobby. By 2001, the bubble burst and I got laid off a few times within a year. The last time, I just thought, maybe I should be more serious about art.

So I mainly focused on art, though it took a few years before I really thought of it as a business. I gradually moved from collage to mixed media to painting, refining my techniques and learning about my media as I went. Now I consider myself a painter. My years in design school definitely gave me a foundation for my artwork, though probably a different one than if I’d gone to art school.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?

I think it’s pretty rare to have a smooth road! I dove into the art world having come from freelance design work, so I was familiar with the importance of contracts etc, but I didn’t really know much about galleries or how to start showing my work. I didn’t have many contacts and I just learned as I went.

It took me several years, as I said, to really start thinking of this as a business instead of just a thing I enjoyed doing, and I had to learn some of that as well. When I began, I didn’t feel like I could say no to anything, so I am sure I made some bad decisions about where to show work and who to work with. It’s sometimes a struggle to know what’s going to be a good use of my limited time.

The lack of consistent income has always been a challenge too – some years are great and others far less so.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?

I’m a painter who’s primarily inspired by pattern and decoration. I incorporate geometric patterns into all my pieces, in one way or another – usually multiple patterns in every piece, in maximalist fashion. I’m known for my use of color and pattern, and my work generally has an optimistic feel to it. My recent work deals with the wind, clouds, weather and atmosphere – I think of these paintings as inner landscapes that reflect the natural world.

My process is fairly unique – I start my paintings with a patterned fabric that I glue to a panel with acrylic medium. The fabric pattern serves as an inspirational jumping-off point (though it’s usually rendered invisible by the time the piece is completed), and I find the texture of the fabric satisfying to work on. I add layers of pattern and color, including most prominently a raised geometric pattern, which I create by applying thick medium through stencils that I’ve designed. These first layers set up a “problem” for myself which I then have to “solve” to complete the painting.

Do you any memories from childhood that you can share with us?

My favorite recurring childhood memories were the long road trips we’d take once or twice a year from where we lived in Louisiana to my grandparents’ in Pennsylvania. My parents had one of those big 70s cars and my brother and I would kind of roll around in the back seat with all our books and toys and a cooler of snacks. I loved reading and I loved looking out the window at the landscape and landmarks along the way. We always took the same route and usually stopped for the night in the same place, so it felt fun and exciting but also familiar.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://heatherrobinson.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hnrfineart/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heatherrobinsonfineart
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@basmatiheather
• Other: https://mastodon.art/@hnrfineart

Image Credits

Bob Hsiang