Heather Wilcoxon

b. 1947, Biography from AskART: The following, submitted December 2005, is from the artist.

I received my MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1988. After several years of painting and searching for my own visual voice, I received several awards, including a Pollock/Krasner Grant in 1999, two Marin Arts Council Grants. (1991-1998) as well as a Djerassi Artist in Residence Fellowship in Woodside California. My work has been featured in solo exhibitions in New York, Houston, Denver and San Francisco. I have also been included in several group exhibitions at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, The Triton Museum of Art, and The Bedford Gallery, Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek. I am honored to have my work be in several collections, such as the Achenbach Foundation of Graphic Arts in San Francisco, The Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara and Rene di Rosa in Napa, California. I have taught Painting and Monoprinting at the San Francisco Art Institute, College of Marin, California College of the Arts, Graduate Mentor Program, San Francisco Center for the Book, and am currently teaching at UC Berkeley Extension in San Francisco.

I have been practicing the art of painting for over 20 years. I am committed and passionate about my work. I have had a long-time preoccupation with the balance between abstraction and the narrative. Since 9-11 my work has shifted. My paintings and works on paper are commentaries about our current global situation. Through my drawings, I have developed these characters that I feel reflect all of our concerns, our fears, our worries and our brutality towards one another. I see the world as a dangerous place. However, I am seasoned enough to see the absurdity of it all. My cartoon characters represent both the comedy and tragedy of humanity. In their childlike iconography, they embody a sense of innocent playfulness, yet in their monstrous rendering a dark humor is reflected. This dichotomy creates an interesting tension. In my larger paintings, I invite the viewer in with nice colors and pretty surfaces. But if you look closer, the bite is there.