Andrea Joyce Heimer: Holy Mountain

Shown for the first time here at the Whatcom Museum, this group of autobiographical paintings by Andrea Joyce Heimer reflect on states of loneliness, both in herself and in others.

Over the course of the pandemic the artist spent many hours in nature—as much as she once did in childhood. Having grown up in Montana, she is familiar with land that stretches out in all directions under a big sky and where pine covered mountains skirt brutally desolate badlands.

The Montana landscape is omnipresent in her densely populated, story-filled paintings. Each mountain, stream, prairie, and butte is as much a character in the work as the human figures that teem within.

Now a resident in Washington, where the impenetrable terrain emits a different kind of claustrophobic loneliness, the ferns, moss, mushrooms, and trees of this place make their way into her work. A multitude of encounters and experiences unfold through the varied painted scenes, leaving Heimer, as she puts it, “both bigger and smaller, more lost and more found.”

Learn more about Heimer’s work from Nino Mier Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, or visit her website, www.andreajoyceheimer.com.