Spotlight Artist

Heather Day

Pacific Coast
Artist profile photo

Turning Sky No. 2

Abstract painting with four colorful, triangular sections blending blue, pink, and red hues.

mixed-media on canvas

Winnowing Wind

Abstract painting with bold, overlapping green, orange, blue, and cream shapes.

mixed-media on canvas

Vanishing Blue

Abstract painting with bold shapes in blue, pink, red, black, and yellow hues.

mixed-media on canvas

Featured in New American Paintings1 / 3

Artist Statement

 Heather Day is an artist whose paintings build on the traditions of abstract expressionism to explore overlapping themes of sensory perception, memory, and elements of the natural world.

Day builds vast inventories of painted forms that are taken apart, rearranged, and sewn back together in a concert of opposing forces and color fields. This counterproductive process embraces our limited control over chaos and draws the viewer in through rhyming lyrical gestures and harmonizing fields of pigment.

Her paintings, both in form and in color, are meant to challenge our expectations of the everyday experience and encourage the viewer to meditate on their own personal histories. How does the sound of a grating branch in the wind translate to an errant mark? How does a vibrating, painted wash capture raking light in the moments before sunset? This exploration seeks to push boundaries and evoke contemplation about the dynamic relationship between the tangible and the abstract.

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