Meet Heidi Caswell Zander

Today we’d like to introduce you to Heidi Caswell Zander.

Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
When I was seven my Dad bought a Country Store in an art colony. This fast tracked my crayon drawing into becoming something more skilled with the help of the old gent artists sitting in their lawn chairs in front of their converted fishing shack galleries. By the time I turned nine I was literally off and running with an adult group. A big, huge actually burl John Teralak allowed me to tag along if I could keep up and be quiet. I did and was. Next came membership in Betty Lou Schelmm’s watercolor group. People flew in from all over the US to partake and grow from her passionate presentations on the glory of clouds and the simple understanding of the planes of rocks in light and shadow. I learn in my first three days how to see sky, sea and land forms and architecture, mores than my art school days to follow. “Draw things as they are built”, and “Isn’t this exciting” Schlemm would bellow out transcending herself into bliss as the process enveloped her. This abides within me as do the granite, salty hues of blue and eternally changing cloud character.

One afternoon, sitting on my own to capture the side of a New England clapboard building, sun licked it in transparent transforming orange, I knew THIS was it for me: to bring this to paper, the challenge and the connection to wondrous natural phenomena I knew was now a life goal. It was right then I felt doing this would tether me to something grander, universal, Truthful.

Leaving for college as I turned 17 began my life log learner adventure: Colby-Sawyer for Liberal Arts, Rhode Island Design for a Painting BFA, MAT and a year European Honors Program in Rome. Stateside landed me in NYC and the European urge brought me to Berlin Germany for a decade. The wealth of architecture and art and design fed me. Since 2000 I have been ‘home’, opened Tidal Edge Gallery 2005 and am presently Vice President of The Rockport Art Association & Museum.

Please tell us about your art.
Often people see work at my gallery and ask who are the artists. Rather than stick to a sole path and style I continually explore left and right of my core impressionistic/expressionistic landscapes. My work is colorful, powerful, represents a place with a feeling of say sun, wind, heat, excitement, and relates to painters who have painted for the decades and centuries before me. It is uniquely identifiable as my style and despite what media I use my sense of color and pronounced brushstroke come through. Capturing the essence of a location, a moment, is important. I find too that as time goes on the work becomes an historical document encapsulating a world that has evolved to a new moment and experience and often new physical environment.

When I was in art school, RISD, there was a time when I was told some of my work should be ‘you can’t be happy all the time’. I refuted this directive, instead I held to a quote from Mattise who ‘wanted his art to be like a soft arm chair at the end of the day’. This is what I aspire: to fill people with something positive, not sweet but a positive powerful sense of our surroundings. I observe to identify active harmony about me. The use of recognizable subjects serves as a portal to enter the work, a common denominator from which to advance into the dashes of color, the glistening resin background, the thick patches of light paint.

The other artist I used as a counter muse was Hopper. I found his seascapes so static, frozen in time that I strove to incorporate a feeling of the fourth dimension of time. Breaking the picture plane, a bit like the Cubists and Futurists helped in giving a field of vision which moves the viewer about so that reading of the imagery requires extended discovery, no easy read. I hope this pushes people to reexamine their environment, to see the yellows, pinks and blues in the sky, to see shadows and the way light anchors us to the earth in beautiful hues of blues and violet. Life can be magically good, special, and when we connect to our environment a certain harmony and happiness plays out which I hope to document in my subject matter. I hope people slow down and enjoy the amazing elements of the world about them.

I use a colored resin base on canvas which often glimmers like a piece of stained glass, this serves as the base for the building of colored layers of brushstrokes which begin thin and dark until new layers thick, opaque and light orchestrate the tones and hues specific to the character of place. This particular approach simulates a wide range of surface refraction providing the viewers eye with rich darks and sparkling edges as well as dense matte colors, as would be experienced in nature. The painting surfaces allow simultaneously both the process to be evident as well as the subject matter. The style is unique while also relatable to the Plein Air culture of historic Rockport. The training of watercolor is part of and visible in my oil painting process, layers retained, edges hard and soft.

As an artist, how do you define success and what quality or characteristic do you feel is essential to success as an artist?
Success for me is aligning the creative process to connect and convey one’s unique experience of environment to others, to present a tuning in to what surroundings have to visually offer and the gratification of ‘seeing’. Success is in presenting the harmonies found in natural color, shape and value relationships, in the subject and its unique character. It is also about relating all the progression of artistic styles to this period in time and culture. In the 1980’s while with friends I kept them looking up to the clouds and explained that depending where you live clouds vary from herds to streaks to fluff. To this day I am told they never looked at the sky the same way, they are more thoughtful, see the colors, the type, and have a deeper connection/awareness with/of their location that is very positive. Families I have encouraged to ‘see’ through simple sketching have slowed down on vacations and shared an improved experience from being more conscious of their placement amongst a landscape unfamiliar.
Success is making a lasting impression that transfers and grows within other people, it gets carried forth.

How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
Presently My work is shown in about 25 shows a year throughout New England. My home base is in Rockport, MA Tidal Edge Gallery on 3 School Street, which I opened in 2005. To support my work, purchasing and becoming a ward of my paintings, is possible through Tidal Edge, contact via Facebook, TidalEdgeGallery.com, or during exhibits at The Rockport Art Association & Museum ( Vice President) , North Shore Art Association, Newburyport Art Association, National Association of Women Artists, and the Experimental Group of RAA&M.. My Facebook postings share current works and exhibitions. Heidi Zander

Contact Info:

• Address: 3 School Street Rockport, MA 01966
• Website: TidalEdgeGallery.com
• Phone: 978-869-0474
• Email: ARTatlantic@aol.com
• Facebook: Heidi Zander

Image Credit:
Heidi Caswell Zander

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