Allison: I notice that you have more pieces of work that involve painting than graphic design or typography. You’re concentration is design right?

Heather: [laughing] Yes, my concentration is design and everybody always asks me that question. I guess all I can say is that my passion is painting, but design is something I can make a career out of. A lot of the time I use my skills of painting to enhance my design work. And graphic design is such a hard principle to define. I don’t think it should be separated from all of the other fields of art, which it seems to me that it is. Designers are artists in their own right and I feel like painting, illustration and whatever else goes hand to hand with design. They complement each other.

Allison: Well every painting I see involves a figure, you seem to have two completely different styles, one being realistic and the other being almost cartoon like or, loose. When I look at your design work, I don’t see any evidence of a figure.

Heather: Yeah, I love painting people, I think they are the most interesting creatures on this planet, full of unexplainable emotion, and to capture the emotion of a person and transfer it on to canvas is what I strive for the most. I want the viewer to feel what the figure is feeling. It’s a challenge. I guess design is a good field for me because it is the ability to evoke a certain emotion from the client/audience. So even though my designs don’t have people in it, the design itself is MADE for a person or people. That is where I see the connection between my paintings and my designs.

Allison: For your paintings: do you have any preference for materials? For your designs: Do you have a preference of style?

Heather: I usually paint in oil and sometimes acrylic. As far as design, I am interested in mostly typography even though I’m not a master at it. I’m obviously still learning, but type is what intrigues me the most because it’s having to portray an idea without the use of an image.

Allison: So it is safe to say that your theme is people, and their emotions and dispositions?

Heather: Yeah I guess that could be a theme. I don’t know really. I’m still working on it. I don’t really think of a theme when I’m making my work, I just go for it.

Allison: Do you have any influences for your work? Painting or design?

Heather: Definitely! I love Elizabeth Peyton which is why many of my “loose” paintings that you mentioned before are painted in that fashion. I was inspired by her ability to tell a story, and obviously the technicality of her work. I love the molding paste and gesso background to create a luminosity that you can’t get any other way. Oh, and David Kassan, he is a painter I saw in Chelsea once, his work is so amazing! He creates life sized photo realistic paintings of people with really subtle emotions. When you stand in front of his paintings you almost get uncomfortable because of how large scale they are. It is an amazing experience. I don’t really have inspiration for design, or maybe I have too much inspiration that I can’t pinpoint one person. I read Design Observer regularly which gives me a lot of ideas for design. I respect all designers, I am open to everything.

Allison: That’s awesome, do you have any ideas for your thesis?

Heather: Oh God, thesis. No. I really don’t think I do. I hope I’m not the only one who doesn’t have an idea. Well, I was kind of thinking that I could create a fake business and design all of the letterhead, posters, business cards and everything else for the business. Or I was thinking to create a portrait of a person using design. For example, I have a friend who is absolutely obsessed with celebrity gossip. She lives, sleeps, and breathes celebrity gossip, especially scandals. I was thinking about getting road signs and maybe installing them in the gallery space and I would plaster the road signs with pictures of celebrities rather than the actual road signs because my friend is a horrible driver and her attention is constantly on her addiction to celebrity gossip and scandals rather than the real world. So maybe I do have an idea or two, but I don’t know how well they would work out.