Heather Stivison: Seeds of Change

Heather Stivison, an artist committed to exploring the intersection of environmental science and visual art in her immersive paintings of the ocean, air, and sky will debut a series of works that Stivison calls “Ecoscapes.”

“Seeds of Change: Paintings of Climate Change and Hope,” with its references to natural cycles of growth, renewal, and hope arrives fittingly at the beginning of spring after a winter of extreme weather conditions. The exhibition is comprised of 25 acrylic on canvas paintings including a fifteen foot wide installation of four large panels.

Stivison’s Ecoscape paintings depict natural objects and symbols seemingly floating, untethered in the wind or in deep and shallow bodies of water. Seed pods, stones, plankton, strands of DNA and nautical charts commingle. Stivison says she is inspired by her reading, observation, and interest in petroglyphs and ancient rock carvings and paintings. “Like most of us, I have been deeply concerned about climate change. Reading ‘The Human Age’ by Jane Ackerman I began feeling less hopeless… about the varied possibilities for the future of the planet.”

Stivison said, “I am experimenting with ideas of depth on the canvas. Most of the works are devoid of classic horizon lines and avoid using Eurocentric perspective with vanishing points. In the smaller works, shapes and symbols merely float on the surface.”

Art critic Don Wilkinson said of Stivison, writing in The New Bedford Standard-Times, “Much of her imagery, although clearly rooted in reality, flirts with the abstract. It is that nexxus between the two poles where she is most comfortable as an artist. In the space of visual disruption, she opens herself up to the possibility of different narratives than simple observation might deliver.”

Stivison is known for her interpretations of ocean science research in collaboration with a scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and has recently lectured on her work and that topic at the University of Connecticut. She has exhibited throughout the United States and in national and international juried and invitational exhibitions. This is her first New York solo exhibition.