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Annie Heisey

Annie Heisey’s paintings reflect the idea that our perceptions are colored by our past experiences, limiting our ability to see our world in its entirety with all of its conflicting points of view. As we experience the world, our minds act as a filter where inevitably some information is lost and some is added. Nostalgia colors our perception of the present and creates places in our mind that have never truly existed. Heisey's paintings visually illustrate those nonexistent places interrupted by the very brush strokes that have created them. As her brush strokes layer atop one another, they build images that come into focus and then break apart, resulting in a partially realized world that reflects the limitations of human perception.

Annie Heisey's curent series The Gathering Storm reminds us that painting is still one of the most powerful ways to capture a feeling. Anchored by richly saturated palettes and moments of both tension and stillness, Heisey’s paintings compel us to question our assumptions. What are we really looking at? And what do we bring to it? Our memories, our fears, what things are we still trying to make sense of? Heisey paints with control, then intentionally lets it slip. Her figures exist in emotionally charged worlds that vibrate with urgency. The weight in the air. The quiet before the storm. That feeling you get when something’s about to change. Heisey uses her mastery not for realism alone, but to challenge our sense of what is real. In Heisey's hands, the storm is a metaphor for the fragile space between perception and truth.

Heisey is an artist living and working in her native city of Pittsburgh, PA. Best known for her paintings of beautifully rendered figures in abstracted environments, Heisey’s artwork aims to disrupt our experience of a painting as a simulation of the physical world. Since receiving her MFA from Boston University in 2007, Heisey’s artwork has been exhibited nationally in galleries and institutions which include the Boston Center for the Arts, Site:Brooklyn Gallery in Brooklyn NY, and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh PA. Her awards include; the Junior Artist Residency at the Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland OR, a nomination for the Portland Art Museum’s NW Contemporary Art Award, and the 2019 Festival Award at the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Her paintings have been included in several catalogs and publications including the Boston Globe.

portfolio.jpg View images from Annie Heisey's 2025 exhibit The Gathering Storm.


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