We were lucky to catch up with Chloe Hedden recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Chloe thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I was raised in a family that assumed that if you were good at something, you’d do it as a career. Money be damned. At the age of six, I had already been told which college I should attend–RISD, of course–and that my interest in “figural realism” was serious and deserving. I spent much of my childhood drawing. We didn’t have a TV. My sister would watch me sketch while I narrated the scene. It was a form of storytelling that kept us amused in a small town with very few kids our age and almost no kindreds. Our parents were artist-intellectuals who had decided after getting their degrees from Harvard to “return to the land,” grow food, build their home, and raise a family. I don’t think they ever really imagined how hard it would be for us to try and fit in to this small and intensely Mormon town. Art become a way of imagining other realities. The more realistic the work, the more believable it was. In this way, as a child, I only ever believed I was an artist. Doubts came later.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

As an artist, I look for the unseen patterns and hidden narratives that reveal the magnificence in all things. Robert Henri said, “Paint the spirit of the bird rather than its feathers.” There is a still point in every moment and to capture this essential luminescence is to acknowledge the ancient wisdom in all things. I make use of archetypes from the cultural and mystical history that connects all humans and all life forms. Joseph Campbell said that artists are the shamans of our time. I believe that we have the ability as well as the obligation to find and share truth and offer direction to the greater community. It is with this inspiration that I delve into the riches of the collective unconscious and the imagery and symbolism of my dreams to draw out something bigger than myself to share with the world.

I was born and raised in Utah’s wild red desert, but have had the great fortune to call many amazing places around the world my home. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, I am as comfortable painting large oils as I am illustrating children’s books. In 2007, I won an International Creativity award in the category of commercial illustration for “The Peaceful Warrior.” My first children’s book, “The Illuminated Desert,” written by Terry Tempest Williams and published by the Canyonlands Natural History Association in 2008, won The Mountains and Plains Bookseller’s Award for Best Children’s Book. My paintings and sculptures can we found in numerous public and private collections around the world.

I paint the poetry of light. Zooming in close to a dense cluster of glittering refraction, or delicate transparency and shadow, I render these microcosms on large canvases with purposeful brush strokes. My pieces are portraits of a particular flower or mineral at a precise moment in time that will never exist again.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I get to be in an ongoing conversation with the world. There isn’t much surety, but my life is lived directly (not through proxy).

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Buy art from living artists for art sake, not merely as a financial investment.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.chloehedden.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chloehedden/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chloeheddenart