Wendy Heldmann's “All Small Stories”

Ditch Projects, Springfield, Oregon May 6 - May 28

https://ditchprojects.com/Wendy-Heldmann

Wendy Heldmann is a painter who has read every issue of the New Yorker since 2004. Her output is prolific despite not having had a one-person show since her 2014 exhibition “Fragile Kit” at long-since shuttered Marine Contemporary in Venice, CA, just two years after the artist moved from Los Angeles to Eugene, Oregon. Much can be gathered about what the artist has been up to since in “All Small Stories,” Heldmann’s recent exhibition at the spacious Ditch Projects in Springfield, Oregon. The 29 works in the exhibition are the product of carefully deliberated translations of personal photographs into paintings, yet they are far from photorealistic; Heldmann’s painting process having more to do with the empathetic re-enactment of memory through the act of painting itself than faithful re-creations of snapshots.

“All Small Stories” is a sensitive walkthrough of another life, the modest-sized works ranging from bay-area kitchen interiors at sunset, to companionway views into and out from a sailboat at anchor, to dining rooms, living rooms, countertops and wardrobes, an overloaded grocery cart – think pandemic shopping - all painted in hi-chroma hues that are at once engrossing and illuminating due to Heldmann’s deft handling of washy acrylic paint on carefully prepared absorbent ground panels. The installation of “All Small Stories” suggest a calendar year of leaving and entering spaces, preparations for events marked with things like flower arrangements and cupcakes and overdue trips to Trader Joe’s – and importantly how the stuff we leave behind or don’t put away or haven’t put away yet tell the story of what we are doing or what we were doing just before we left.

Among the many works in Heldmann’s show is a painting of the artist’s Siamese cat, who’s softly rendered body sits eyes closed in the center of a spilled-open chromatically painted bag of Legos. The setting is the center of a living room, blue upholstered built-in couch in the background, abstract artworks on the walls, books piled on the end-tables, graphic printed couch pillows pushed to one side – the domain of a maximalist, or a parent.

The details are painted in a just-enough manner, many colorful blocks and book spines seemingly achieved with a single loaded brush stroke, other things in the scene rendered finely with idiosyncratic detail; the way memory works – some things sharply in focus, other things wooly and smudgy but with a discernable vibe. Opposite this painting across the gallery is a large painting of a tray of sparingly sprinkled chocolate cupcakes with large wax numerals poking up to celebrate Heldmann’s mother’s 75th birthday.

On the table in the background is a bouquet of flowers still fresh, given in condolence for the artist’s father’s recent passing, and on the wall in the background is a painting of a painting of an altogether other bouquet given to Heldmann and I when we married in 2004. Many of the paintings in “All Small Stories” show us everything happening all the time and all at once, in loops and layers of telling and retelling.

Bookending the exhibition are a painting of a rainbow and a self-portrait – the rainbow painting one of 100s of unique “End of Pallet” rainbows that Heldmann has painted in the last five years that are made up of arcs palette paint leftover at the ends of days in the studio – and a self-portrait of the artist, who’s face has been expressively graffitied with a child’s face painting kit.

Insofar as the rainbow is a demonstration of resourcefulness, the self-portrait is a celebration of the requisite resilience required to be present for the people in our lives who will inevitably and unavoidably leave their marks on us. In Heldmann’s paintings we find ourselves in a world that is spinning, and which is also travelling around the sun.