Brenda Heim

Brenda Heim’s paintings and sculptures follow a long line of freethinking artists that include the New York School Action Painters and the Color Field Painters of the 1950s. By borrowing the Action Painters affinity for spontaneous and unorthodox paint application, with the Color Field Painter’s emphasis on one’s emotional state of mind as expressed through color, Heim has amassed her very own body of work that is flavored with an enchanting absence of the known world.

Heim was born in 1957 in Alliance, Ohio, and currently resides in Umatilla, Florida. Her earliest work from 1979-89 can best be characterized as passive and analytical – a state which would change profoundly from 1989-91 when she experienced first hand, Zen brush painting, psychotherapy and emotional release techniques – new areas of interest that freed her both emotionally and intellectually – body and soul.

Picasso once said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” Essentially, this is what happened with Heim. That free thinking, non-prejudiced, eyes wide open approach that most of us last felt as a child took over her stagnant painting process. Heim was moving away from being a non-descript observer/painter to a passionate, bold and impulsive Action Painter like her forbearers. She likes to state it as a feel first, think second methodology that many art lovers will find quite refreshing and honest since so many are concerned only with fame and fortune.