ARTIST BIO
Heather Bird Harris creates tonal, abstract paintings that reflect the history of land. Using found earth pigments, her work explores parallels between humanity and nature, including our past and present relationship to the land.
Heather graduated from Skidmore College in 2009 with a degree in Art History and Studio Art. She has worked closely with artist Oliver Herring to host three iterations of his relational works, “Task Parties,” and has also participated in the Turnaround Arts program through President Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. As an educator, Heather also writes anti-racist history curriculum for schools in Louisiana, which is a lens that deeply informs her art.
She has participated in multiple exhibitions in New York and Louisiana, and her paintings and commissions have been sold to collectors across the US and Canada.
Heather lives in New Orleans with her partner Josh and their two babies, Jade and Hazel.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I paint abstract land stories using earth pigments found in southern Louisiana / Bulbancha. My work explores the parallels between humanity and nature, women and the earth, and our past and present relationship to the land.
My recent work focuses on the throughlines between Louisiana’s history of injustice and its current environmental and human crises. My paintings explore the range of our experiences in relation to a singular but layered place, highlighting the history that has been baked into the land, and articulating the tension between natural beauty and human darkness.
I believe the earth has a long memory and that we do not - intentionally or otherwise. I view my roles as an artist, historian, and citizen of a capitalist republic as deeply intertwined and linked to the same core responsibilities: interrogate imbalances, reckon with hard histories, and imagine a future of natural equilibrium.