Heather Mann lives in Surrey and gained a BA Hons in Fine Art at Duncan Jordanstone in Dundee in 2005. Previously Heather studied at Chelsea with Chris Ofili, Mariko Mori and Neil Tate but left in the second year to pursue an ideological lifestyle, spending several years living off grid in southern France in an area where there were far more wild boar per km2 than there were people. She returned to the UK to complete her studies in 2002 at Scotland's top art college, exhibiting from her second year onwards in London, Sydney and Glasgow. Upon qualifying with a 1st she was supported by grants from the Scottish Arts council who have her work in their collection and on the walls of their meeting rooms.
Heather makes what she calls "slow paintings", the antithesis of the fast fix, consumer culture that surrounds us, she sees her works as meditation tools that provide time and space for contemplation, revealing themselves slowly, but capable of holding your attention forever.
The longer you spend with the work the more questions may percolate in your mind. What is an image? What is an image capable of? What occupies the spaces between images and reality? Where does an image end and are we as observers also part of the image? Or you may skip the questions and go straight to the peace and calm that these images transmit.
"Nature has always been my inspiration and I often ponder the visual accomplishment of this world that we often take for granted.” Knowing myself inadequate to translate this perfection I make images of the natural world as comments on mankind's place within it. Reflective aluminium and reflective water, two very different elements with an overlap of qualities used to express ideas of reality and the interplay between the real and the image."
"When I walk through nature I am constantly in awe of the beauty and perfect juxtaposition of it’s colours, particularly in winter when the disappearance of spring, summer and autumns comparatively vulgar displays, would have us believe that all colour has gone."
After graduating in 2005 Heather eventually returned to the southern European sun where she continued to paint and exhibit, her most recent exhibition were of still lives for TuttiArt, Lucerne. Switzerland.
