Andrea Joyce Heimer lives and works in Ferndale, Washington, USA. Her densely populated paintings are autobiographical ruminations inspired largely by personal experience. Heimer begins her pieces by writing their descriptive and illustrative titles. Confessional and diaristic, these highly narrative works often detail scenes from Heimer’s adolescence in western Montana, but also encompass events past and present.
Heimer’s almost pictographic work draws inspiration from other story-based forms of art that shirk the illusion of space and instead render figures and objects as flat pattern. Influences include Ancient Greek Black- and Red-Figure vases; Medieval illuminated manuscripts and bestiaries; and Persian miniatures. Her work also shares an affinity with certain traditions of self-taught art including the work of Henry Darger, Horace Pippin, and Grandma Moses.
Her paintings have been exhibited in the 15th Istanbul Biennial (Turkey); Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York (USA); Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea, Milan (Italy); idrawalot Collective, Berlin (Germany); Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (UK); Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York (USA); and Hometown, New York (USA), among others. In 2015 her fiction story, Red, was adapted to film, debuting in the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. Her work has been covered in outlets including Art in America, New York Times, The New Yorker, New American Paintings, and Huffington Post.
Heimer received an MFA from the New Hampshire Institute of Art and is represented by Nicelle Beauchene Gallery in New York (USA).