Mary Heilmann makes lush, abstract paintings. This first solo exhibition of her work in Britain featured her then recent works together with key pieces from earlier in her career.
Heilmann’s work plays in tensions between order and disorder, opulence and austerity, expressiveness and restraint. Exploring the possibilities of abstract painting as a medium through which to convey meaning, she has developed a unique way to embrace the cultural and the personal. The colours and the structures she uses relate to human experiences, from the intensely personal, to shared cultural references experienced through music (from bebop to rock’n’roll), and the movies.
