Andrea Joyce Heimer
When I Was A Freshman In High School A Boy I Barely Knew From The School Across Town Asked Me To His Prom. He Was Cute And From California With A Face Like A Sweet Round Orange. I Had No Idea Why He Liked Me, A Morose Ghost. When We Arrived At The Dance I Couldn’t Believe How Popular He Was. Everyone Loved Him. Teen Queens Scurried Over To Throw Their Arms Around Him And Plant Barbie Kisses On His Cheek, All The While Eyeing Me With Confusion. My Date Was Kind, Funny, And Attentive. Outside The Night Was Cold And Frosted. I Never Spoke To Him Again., 2021
Acrylic and oil pastel on panel
60 x 80 in
152.4 x 203.2 cm
(AJO21.010)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
During A Rare Family Trip From Montana To Canada I Got Very Sick But I Was Young And It Was Thought I Was Simply Overtired. I Had A Fever Dream In The Hotel Room. In The Dream A Yellow House Teemed With Monsters And There Was Sex And Blood And Breast Milk. The Furniture Of The House Spoke Directly To Me But I Was Unable To Understand Its Language. The Next Morning My Temperature Climbed And I Hallucinated The Sound Of An Avalanche In The Distance And Wanted Badly To Find A Gun To Protect Us All. Because Of This, We Went Home Early. My Sister Was Mad About The Shortened Trip And Brought It Up Often In The Following Years., 2021
Acrylic and oil pastel on panel
60 x 80 inches
152.4 x 203.2 cm
(AJO21.013)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
I Have Always Wanted To Swim With Everyone Else, In Backyard Pools, Ponds With No Name, The Blackfoot River, The Bitterroot. I Took The Required Swimming Lessons In Elementary School But They Only Left Me Fatigued And Panicky, A State I Tried To Hide While Watching My Classmates Skitter Around The Pool Like Minnows. To This Day I Sink Like A Stone. It Doesn’t Matter How Much I Want To Revel In The Sort Of Weightlessness That Deep Deep Water Offers (I Assume). Yes, I Have Waded Into Montana Rivers Alongside A Slew Of Fish-People And Yes, I Have Smiled Extra Wide To Assure Them That Simply Standing In Waist-High Water Was All I Wanted To Do, All The While Knowing How Quickly I Would Sink If I Joined Them. But They Are Beautiful To Watch, Those Fish-People., 2021
Acrylic and oil pastel on panel
60 x 80 inches
152.4 x 203.2 cm
(AJO21.012)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
I Have Always Wanted To Be A Montana Firewalker, Cooling My Feet And Head In Flathead Lake. But I Am Neither Fast Nor Brave., 2021
Acrylic and oil pastel on panel
60 x 80 in
152.4 x 203.2 cm
(AJO21.014)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
Little Earthquakes In Montana Vibrate The Soles Of Your Feet, Like You’ve Stepped On A Nest Of Bees. A Tiny Hum. Their Small Presence Made Me Know A Bigger Earthquake Was Always Possible. Inevitable Even. When I Learned I Was Adopted A Big Earthquake Happened In Me. A Seismic Shift, A Change. Because There Was A Before And After, Which I Guess Can Be Said About Anything Knowable That Was First Not Known. It’s Not That There Weren’t Signs. Little Vibrations. Tiny Hums Under My Feet., 2021
Acrylic and oil pastel on panel
80 x 60 in
203.2 x 152.4 cm
(AJO21.008)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
Things Between Us Like Ghosts, Not Talking Well, Protectors Past And Present, Positioning, Bad Thoughts, Distance, Tree, Fences, And What Might Be., 2021
Acrylic and oil pastel on panel
80 x 60 in
203.2 x 152.4 cm
(AJO21.011)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
Since I Was A Little Girl I Have Wanted To Be A Cowboy. Sometimes A Horse But Mostly A Cowboy, Just Like My Cousins Whose Lives I Imagined As Hard But Purposeful, With Points Of Leisure Pure And Wild Like Swimming In Warm Springs While Searching For Wayward Calves (This I Focused On The Most). I Imagined Them Doing This And Other Things With The Sort Of Assurance One Has In Knowing Just Where Their Bones Will Live In Death, In The Badlands Graveyard Just Past Town, And Knowing In Life They Would Never Stray Far From It Either., 2021
Acrylic and oil pastel on panel
60 x 40 in
152.4 x 101.6 cm
(AJO21.007)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
I Have Miles And Miles And Miles And Miles To Go, 2021
Acrylic and oil pastel on panel
60 x 40 in
152.4 x 101.6 cm
(AJO21.003)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
The House I Lived In Grew Around Me, Churning With Textures, Patterns, Cleanliness, Vacuum Sounds. I Thought Of It As Hungry And Tightly Wound, And I Thought Of It As An Eater Or Maybe An Absorber Of Things And Even People. The Home As A Sponge. I Imagined It Devouring Me, Chewing Me Into Pieces The Size Of The Flower Petals In The Wallpaper Pattern Or Grinding Me To Powder Like The Dust Along The Baseboards. The House As A Body., 2021
Acrylic and oil pastel on panel
60 x 40 in
152.4 x 101.6 cm
(AJO21.002)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
I Had Never Heard Of A Church Lock In And I Had Never Been To Church. A Friend Asked Me Along To A Group Party Where There Would Be Other Kids, And Only A Few Adults In Charge. Like An Oversized Slumber Party. Not Long After I Arrived We Played A Game Altogether, The Results Of Which Stated Plainly That Myself And A Few Other Unfortunate Souls Were Definitely Going To Hell. I Guess That Meant We Lost The Game. Afterwards, My Friend And The Others Belted Loud Offbeat Songs To The Heavens And I Knew Not A Word Of Them, But I Was Trapped For The Night. Oh My God The Racket They Made., 2021
Acrylic and oil pastel on panel
60 x 40 in
152.4 x 101.6 cm
(AJO21.001)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
I Want To Join The Sleepers Of The World But Insomnia Trails Me, Prodding, Poking, Thumping., 2021
Acrylic and oil pastel on panel
40 x 60 in
101.6 x 152.4 cm
(AJO21.004)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
I Fight Myself Over And Over And Over And Over And Over Again., 2021
Acrylic and oil pastel on panel
40 x 60 in
101.6 x 152.4 cm
(AJO21.005)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
I Think I Learned Once The English Word “Eclipse” Has Roots In A Greek Word Meaning Abandonment, Named Such Because In The Moments Of An Eclipse The Sun Abandons The Earth. This Disappearance Of The Sun Used To Terrify Mankind Because The Loss Of The Big Glowing Giver-of-Life Was Too Frightening To Understand, If Only For A Moment. That Threshold Between Light And Dark Is Known To Me, A Person Who Was Left Behind In A Big Wild State When I Was The Size Of A Pumpkin And Pink As A Tongue. I Have Always Felt Between, Stuck In A Threshold That Unlike Death, Sex, Menstruation, Escape, An Eclipse, Has No Name That I Know Of. Maybe The Greeks., 2021
Acrylic and oil pastel on panel
60 x 80 in
152.4 x 203.2 cm
(AJO21.009)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
Julys Were Full Of Cloudbursts, A Dime A Dozen, Sudden And Violent. On This Day I Watched A Group Of People Caught In One. They Scattered To The East And West And Ran Like Gazelles, Bolts Of Lightning Licking Their Heels. I Was Momentarily Entranced By The Movement Of Their Legs, So Swift And So Synchronized, But Then Again I Was Never Much Of A Runner., 2021
Acrylic and oil pastel on panel
40 x 60 in
101.6 x 152.4 cm
(AJO21.006)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
Anxiety Drawing 2, 2021
Marker and oil pastel on paper
30 x 44 in
76.2 x 111.8 cm
(AJO21.015)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
Anxiety Drawing 3, 2021
Marker and oil pastel on paper
30 x 44 inches
(AJO21.016)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
Anxiety Drawing 4, 2021
Marker and oil pastel on paper
30 x 44 inches
(AJO21.017)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
Anxiety Drawing 5, 2021
Marker and oil pastel on paper
30 x 44 inches
(AJO21.018)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
Anxiety Drawing 1, 2021
Marker and oil pastel on paper
30 x 44 inches
(AJO21.019)
Andrea Joyce Heimer
Anxiety Drawing 6, 2021
Marker and oil pastel on paper
30 x 44 in
76.2 x 111.8 cm
(AJO21.020)