Suffused with pessimistic shadows and redemptive illumination, Canadian pop-surrealist painter Heather Watts’ intricate paintings harness the pageantry of anthropomorphic heroes and martyrs to tell the story of individuals grappling with forces larger than themselves.
Watts has exhibited her symbolic narrative works in galleries across the US, in Canada and overseas, at venues including The Art Gallery of Calgary, La Luz de Jesus in Los Angeles, Strychnin in Berlin, and M Modern among others.
She is a self-taught painter with a Bachelor’s Degree in Asian Area Studies from the University of British Columbia and has been painting professionally since 2003. She is based out of her hometown of Vancouver, Canada.
“There is something I feel in my heart when I am at peace with things exactly as they are – accepting of my situation whatever it may be and not judging my own thoughts and fears about it. When I am in this state, when I am fully in the moment of whatever is happening to me, particularly if it is a moment of fear or sadness – any kind of negative emotion – I experience this profound feeling of everything all mixed up together, as if all life’s good things and all life’s bad things are notes in the most beautiful chord, all played together. This is the feeling that lies at the core of my work.
Life, nature, mysticism, death, love, melancholy – these elements are all very much tied up with this feeling, a feeling that somehow encompasses everything, all these opposites swirling together in harmony.” – Heather Watts (bonexpose.com)
