Since we have one guy in Denton, TX, we’ve decided to let him run around town and try to catch a few of the creatives. Andy (somehow) was found himself included in the 52th Annual Voertman’s Exhibition and managed to sneak away with a bunch of artist’s names. He tracked down University of North Texas artist Kelsey Anne Heimerman and managed to coordinate a conversation with her while an audio recorder happened to be sitting nearby. Read along as Andy discovers what it’s like to be a very good artist.

It takes intense meditation to hold those up with your mind
ADR: Alright, so just first thing all we need is a short introduction- your name, what you do…
Okay. I’m Kelsey Anne Heimerman. I’m an oil painter, mostly, currently sutdying at UNT. I came from a family of artist: My mother is a glassblower, my father is a carpenter, and then I have a sister who livers abroad who’s a printmaker, and then another sister who’s a photographer. So, I’ve always been encouraged to paint and I’ve been painting since I was a kid, so now I’m studying it in school

–Looking through all the work that I’ve seen, there obviously a large amount of abstraction and seems like patterning, consistent even with kinda the earlier paintings I saw on your website. What drew you to this, or, rather, how did you discover your appreciation for that method of abstraction?
I made my first abstract painting when I was 20 years-old- before that I did more surrealist/ invented kind of landscapes or scenes with figures in them. It’s kind of funny, I made my first abstract painting as a joke because people in my class were turning in these paintings, and I just didn’t get it. They were showing stuff that I thought looked too easy, or I really didn’t understand the paint application, so, I was like, “I’m going to make a huge joke painting about abstract paintings!” And I got this banner that I found in the trash, it was a seven-foot piece of vinyl paper. So I started painting on that my first abstract painting, and I spent forty hours on it, and then I just, after the forty hours, I just had this vision of what it could be. And I spent probably another sixty hours on it, and that painting got into the 500X Gallery. [which is really prostegious in Dallas]And that just really pushed me to keep going with the abstraction and all my professors encouraged it. So that’s the direction that I’m working with now.
–Cool! Weren’t really expecting a joke to go that far?
Hah, yeah.

Currently exhibiting in the 52th Annual Voertman's Exhibition
–Do you approach each painting with a concept before-hand, or you kind of “feel it out”, letting like a sense of self-expression complete the imagery?
Mostly I’ll work intuitively, from one brush stroke to the next. Normally I’ll work on a painting for a few weeks at a time, so that’s were you get all the overlappings of, maybe a really tightly-painted pattern or maybe something more painterly- those are kind of showing different days that I’m painting different moods that I’m in. Sometimes I’m feeling really analytical, so I want to paint something really precise and small or pattern-oriented. Or sometimes I’m feeling more painterly, so that’s when you get these other styles kind of intermingling. When I do commissions and stuff, obviously I have to work from imagery. But I feel like whenever I work from imagery I’ll do a drawing or a sketch and I flesh out the drawing and then I feel like the image is finished as a drawing. So I feel working intuitively is a more genuine approach to the painting.
–Right on. Continuing on,how much do you plan your paintings? Obviously, not- or do you?
Uh,no, not really- most of them are pretty intuitive. The more time I spend with them, the more they develop. But, mostly my sketchbook is writings or watercolors or me just wanting to draw and not having a canvas in front of me. So it’s not really full of ideas, and then I take the book and paint the idea. It’s just kind of another outlet for me
–It’s just saying what you can. Like, “this one going to be larger!”And that kinda goes into this next question: I also saw on your website a variety of mediums- the watercolors, inks, mixed media. Besides maybe being for a class, is there a mental hierarchy to each composition? You kinda answered that to your sketch leading to a study, so I guess it would be you just do whatever you can. Right?
Yeah, I would say I probably take oil painting the most seriously. Not to say that I can’t take the other mediums seriously- probably the one next to that would be a pen-and-ink drawing. But I have such an affinity for the oil painting, and I feel it’s something that I’ve studied for so long that to not take it seriously at this point would be silly.

–So, it’s more like the other mediums- watercolor, inks- they’re things that are fun to do when you want to express yourself, but when it comes to serious business, you just rely on oils to really say, “this is what I mean”?
Yeah, I guess you could say that. I always envisioned, with all my other stuff, that I would do larger installations. ‘Cause I don’t do large drawings or large collages or watercolors- I mostly just do large oil paintings. So I’ve always envisioned just putting all them together in a large installation to create a larger piece. They’re also good to make to sell [laugh] because people can afford them.
–Yeah, I have a commission right now- it’s a friend of a friend thing. They wanted a four-foot by six-foot painting of Bob Marley. My first quote was “$500!”. “We don’t have that money!” $300 if you give me unlimited time!” And they still don’t have the money. So, if you’re college kids, do you really expect to have enough money to pay for something like that? Yeah, that’s definitely smart. Last question: What do you plan on doing after graduating? ‘Cause saw on your site that you expect to graduate next semester.
Well, actually, I have one year left. I’ll probably apply to grad school- I’m exactly not sure where. I’m thinking maybe Maine or somewhere close to New York but not actually New York ’cause I feel like I would suffocate in that city. Or, possibly somewhere abroad. But I’ll probably just take out a giant, giant loan [laugh] and keep going to school. I’m 21 right now, so I’ll graduate my undergrad when I’m 22, and then I plan to have my master’s by the time I’m 25. And, from there, I just want to try and build networks with people and get into the galleries. I remember when I first had Jim Burton as my teacher in my first Intermediate Painting class, the first meeting that I had with him, I was like, “I want to be a painter. I want people to read my names in books and I want people to study me, and I want to be famous!” And he just looked at me with these eyes that was like, “That’s really hard to do, Kelsey.” “I will die trying it!” I just want to live off my paintings. And if I can’t do that, then… I don’t know.

Hope it works out! Also, is there anything you want to promote- any events coming up that you want to talk about real quick?
Not right now. I just finished a show yesterday- the Bolivar Arts Collective, a collective I’m a part of. And earlier in the month I did a fundraiser for “Hug It Forward”. But, right now, I’m just trying to finish up the semester. And then probably more Bolivar Art Collective shows will come throughout the summer. But, yeah, that’s all.
–Cool. Alright! Thank you for your time!
Yeah, thank you!
Make sure to check out more of Kelsey’s work on her website! It’ll be good for you, I promise.