Kristin Heritage

https://www.kristenheritage.com/

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Statement

My work emerges from a deep fascination with the absurdity and complexity of daily life in industrialized capitalist society, the objects that dominate it, and the personal mythologies we construct to reconcile our realities.  Working primarily in figurative painting, alongside free motion and machine embroidered textile works, I draw inspiration from the style and visual language of medieval art, cartooning and 20th century social realism.  The subjects of my painting draw from my life, as well as history, news events and esoteric philosophy.  The world of my work is composed of everyday objects and settings charged with metaphysical significance and subject to incursions of cosmic and mythological forces.  I am interested in natural forces and cycles of the year, and the technology used to keep them at bay and maintain unnatural standards of productivity—the coffee we use to stay awake throughout the work day, the air conditioners that keep our homes comfortable, the calendars and holidays we use to make sense of the passage of time.   Within my work, I am not interested in escapism, but rather in using symbol and atmosphere playfully to make visible the emotional and psychic landscape I navigate.

Bio

Kristen Heritage is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist creating paintings, textile works and music.  After receiving a    BFA in Fibers with a minor in Art History from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2018, Heritage relocated to Brooklyn.  Heritage creates figurative paintings and textile works informed by her deep interest in the symbolism of everyday spaces and objects in conversation with the value systems and visual language of Western art history.  Heritage is the recipient of a 2021 New York City Artist’s Corps grant and has attended the ChaNorth Artist Residency in New York’s Hudson Valley and the 33 Officina Creativa residency in Toffia, Italy.  Heritage has exhibited in group shows in New York City, Savannah, Georgia, and Troy, New York.