We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Melissa Hefferlin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Melissa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?

Almost fifteen years ago my artist husband and I began spending half our time in a small town in southern Spain. It has been an inspiring regime, which has fed my art practice in a hundred ways. Spending time there also served as a kind of spiritual/artistic finishing school for me, in a back-handed way.  Here’s the story.

I had not realized that I was holding my breath for public approval of my work. I was just being me the only way I knew to be me. But despite being in my 40’s, I teared up the first time an Andalusian person said to me, “Now I know that you PAINT, but it’s your husband who’s the REAL ARTIST, right?”

That stung, probably because it was my worst nightmare. My husband truly is an amazing artist, I am amazed by him, but comparisons were death to my creativity.

Andalusians randomly repeated this question to me with astonishing frequency–at least a couple of times a week. “You paint, but your husband is the real artist, right?”

The wonderful thing was that every time someone asked me who was the real artist, assuming a woman was not a real artist, it hurt less. Until finally, today, I chuckle with the speaker when I’m asked this question, and answer in a variety of ways depending on the day. Sometimes I assure them that we are both “real artists,” and sometimes I laugh with them and say they are exactly right. HE is the real artist, and wink at them. But my soul’s reaction now is amusement, and not hurt.

This sexist understanding of who is a real artist and who isn’t taught me that I am MY OWN artist, and that what others think of me or my work is irrelevant to my daily practice. Of course, I want to hear useful, constructive observations of how I work and how I run my business, but I will never wait for approval again. I paint to please myself.

Melissa, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

As an artist, I believe my purpose is to store meaning and experience on canvas, like storing food for winter, but instead storing images to feed the soul. I do this through making oil paintings, working in pastels, and creating hand-pulled prints from carved linoelum. Yes, I want my work to provide decoration, but more importantly I want my collectors to have artworks that add the kind of spirit to their lives which feed them and empower them.

I use curiosity to find images that are meaningful to me. In the studio I play a never-ending game of “Hotter/Colder,” to find what combination of light, objects, lines and fabrics and/or models begin to resemble the thoughts and dreams in my head. What’s in my head is partially my individual experience, but is influenced by what cultural atmosphere surrounds all of us. Though I relish the craft of painting (the technical and formal tools of applying paint to canvas) the most creative part of my practice is the creation of the composition and design.

As a child I wanted to be a writer, and my parents hoped I’d be a violinist. When I met visual art in my teens, I pivoted to paint. I studied in the USA at the University of Tennessee and Parsons Art Institute (when they had an affiliate in Los Angeles), and also as the only American to study at the Russian Academy in Leningrad (sic) during the Soviet Period. One of my most formative experiences as an artist was leaving the educational system of 30 years ago where I was one of the only students pursuing Realism, and arriving at the Russian Academy where I suddenly had over 800 colleagues devoted to the pursuit of representational work.

There are countless wonderful painters working today whom I respect and admire, and recommend. What I value in my own studio is the 30 years of building skill while exploring our beautiful planet. Other than Russia and Spain, I have also spent extensive time in Italy, France, England, Norway, Morocco and Kazakhstan. My husband and my adult son, my business partners, hail from the Caucasus Mountains of the former Soviet Union. That internationality, as well as the training I received from both the East and the West give me an eclectic base which feeds my passion.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

While training as a young artist, I received a message from my professors that artists who will be taken seriously are artists who present “serious,” and even anxious, subject matter.  The more disturbing, the more serious, the more important.

Of course “serious” imagery, inluding art which addresses highly-charged issues, IS an important and necessary part of our canon.

But for someone who’s natural handwriting has a more whimsical vocabulary, and who even dips into the realm of humor, the implied message was that I was doomed to being a hobby painter.

I am thankful to the gallerists and clients who accompanied me faithfully while I shed those unhelpful thoughts over the first decade of my professional life.  Humor and lightness can be profound, and I stand by that declaration.

I would so want to say to a young painter to learn HOW to paint at school and from mentors. Learn every technical thing you can grab onto. But then take the necessary time to focus inward, finding the things you are made to say, and in what voice you are man to say them in. For me it’s beauty and humor, even when I’m discussing highly painful subject matter. But for each person it will be personal to him/her/them. Nobody’s language is more profound than another’s, and culturally we need all the voices singing in the choir to form the most complex song.de

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I think most artists would agree with me that being an artist is it’s own force and drive. Having the hours to make the thing that wants to get out of your head IS the driving goal. If we didn’t burn with this passion, we’d be teachers and lawyers and firemen and plumbers like the sensible citizens with health insurance and benefits.

More specifically, my current work is focused around some black rooster feathers I was given by a dear friend. I have a whole series with them composed in different tableaux. They have hit a powerful chord with me, because of the season of sorrow and conflict which the last two years offered up. To have a glossy “bouquet” which is black, is the perfect vehicle for me to stay true to my language of beauty while speaking honestly about the sorrow which passed over so many whom I love during tumultuous times.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.melissahefferlin.com
• Instagram: @hefferlin
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissahefferlin/

Image Credits
Virginia Webb for my bio picture. Others, I took these photos myself