Heather Hutchison (b.1964)

b. 1964, Corvallis, OR

Heather Hutchison, was born in 1964, in Corvallis, Oregon, where her father, an itinerant caricaturist and cartoonist was drawing sorority and fraternity members at Oregon State University. She was raised moving between coastal Oregon, Laguna Beach, Marin County, and the mile-high desert along the southern border in Bisbee, Arizona. Her self-directed studies as an artist brought her from the San Francisco Bay Area to New York City in 1986, where she kept studios on 24th street between 10th and 11th avenues and later, in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Since 2001, she has lived, worked, and raised her family in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York.

Largely self-taught, Hutchison has developed and innovated methods and mediums including hand-building and bending Plexiglas forms to facilitate her artistic process. Notably Hutchison’s works are constructed of utilitarian, and often re-purposed materials and incorporate ambient light as a primary material. She shares similar concerns with the Light and Space artists and has spent decades observing and contemplating nature. Hutchison’s works capture the essence of the phenomena of light in natural environments. Each piece is a direct inquiry into the perceptual experience of color, light, and shadow particular to a time of day and place. In recent works, Hutchison emphasizes the horizontal world that surrounds us and finds inspiration in the ever-present rhythms and syncopations of nature.

In 1989, Hutchison had her first solo exhibition at Bess Cutler Gallery in SoHo, followed by multiple solo exhibitions with representation by Jamison Thomas Gallery in SoHo, Nohra Haime Gallery in the Fuller Building on 57th Street, Margaret Thatcher Projects in Chelsea, Patricia Shea Gallery, and Shea & Bornstein Galleries in Los Angeles. Most recent solo exhibitions include; Louis Stern Fine Art, Los Angeles (2022, 2017), Winston Wächter Fine Art, Chelsea, NYC (2020, 2016), and Alfstad& Contemporary, Sarasota, FL (2018).

Museum collections include the Brooklyn Museum, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Hutchison has been included in exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, the Montclair Art Museum, the Smithsonian, and the Knoxville Museum of Art, as well as having been included in the 44th Biennial Exhibition of American Painting at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Heather Hutchison has been the grateful recipient of an emergency grant from Anonymous Was A Woman (2020) the Gottlieb Foundation Individual Artist grant (2019, 2011), the Pollock-Krasner award (2012) and a SOS Grant from NYFA (2009). Her work has been discussed in The New York Times, Artnews, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and other fine publications and media.