Human anxiety takes animal form - Sarasota Herald-Tribune - by Kevin Costello - May 1, 2008
Heather Sherman will be showing paintings in an exhibition entitled Hair of the Dog at the Greene Contemporary warehouse from May 3, 2008 through June 10, 2008. There will be an opening reception on Saturday May 3 from 4 to 7 pm. The exhibition will continue through Tuesday June 10 by appointment.
Heather Sherman's paintings explore the intimacy and vulnerability of relationships. In her most recent series of paintings, the psychological projection of love and fear take the form of rabbits. These rabbits are removed from the surface of the painting, like ghosts, forming a layer of protection between them and the rest of the painting. The iconic rabbits serve as witnesses to animalistic human relationships that take place within the forefront of the painting.
Sherman's work is driven by anxiety and fear of loss. In some of her most recent paintings, canine-headed women play out Sherman's security and insecurity, at the same time, in an endless landscape painted from imagination. Sherman creates idealized psychological environments where her objects of affection can coexist.
The origin of the phrase, Hair of the Dog, is literal, and comes from an erroneous method of treatment of a rabid dog bite by placing hair from the dog in the bite wound. By placing back into the wounded a piece of the attacker, a love/hate relationship ensues wherein it was thought that the injured required the Hair of the Dog to heal. In the painting Elil, the physical struggle between the two canine-headed women is a partial embodiment of this type of relationship.
Materials are a constant experiment for Sherman. She works with oil, acrylic, liquid latex, glitter, and collage. Recently, the larger scale of her paintings have created an overwhelming space in which the viewer can become immersed.
A recent graduate of Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, Sherman will be moving to New York City this summer to pursue her MFA at New York University.