Julie Heffernan, Professor in Art and Design, Opens Debut Solo Exhibition

Hirschl & Adler Modern is thrilled to present The swamps are pink with June, Julie Heffernan’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery. Across fifteen new paintings, the artist’s female protagonists, stand-ins for the viewer and the artist herself, inhabit lush gardens and resplendent trees. Nestled beside blooms of rich color are scenes and depictions from western art history. The Fall of Adam & Eve, Hudson River School landscapes, and portraits of Queen Victoria blossom from expansive branches. In others, dense shrubs grow from under the central figure’s skirt, rooting her to the landscape that surrounds her. Climate activism, feminism, identity, and lineage are the major themes of Heffernan’s career and here they entangle in fresh and welcoming ways.

Included here is Heffernan’s newest body of work, her Spill paintings. Born out of the artist’s search for fresh energy in the studio, Heffernan began pouring paint onto canvas to begin each work. The splashes of color that pooled on the surface captured by accident the same energy that she would so painstakingly try to render. Working back into these spills unlocked worlds within worlds, adding a logic and a structure to an otherwise haphazard and random order. The artist herself writes: What I’ve found in the paint spills now is something akin to the chaos I need to describe the actual chaos happening in our environment right at this moment.

Julie Heffernan, The swamps are pink with June opened at Hirschl & Adler Modern on Wednesday, February 8, and runs through Friday, March 17, 2023. Located on the 9th floor of the Fuller Building, at the corner of 57th Street and Madison Avenue, Hirschl & Adler Modern is open Monday through Friday, from 9:30 am to 5:15 pm.

This exhibition is accompanied by an online exhibition catalog, available through Hirschl & Adler’s website.