Heather Lee Birdsong

Lives and works in Portland, OR, USA

Artist statement

Heather Lee Birdsong (American, b. in Spring Valley, Nevada; based in Portland, Oregon) reconstructs and merges half-remembered buildings and carefully observed landscapes from different times in her life, working primarily from memory, imagination, and emotional impetus. The carefully-rendered, dreamlike scenes in Birdsong's works on paper (primarily paintings in gouache or Flashe, and intaglio prints) coalesce from places often no longer accessible to the artist—such as a demolished childhood home, sites of wildfire, and houses and apartments left by moving or through estrangement. That Birdsong's life spans multiple cities and a semi-nomadic existence within each is typical of the instability of modern housing. Birdsong’s recent work describes the complex histories and subtle emotions involved in social relationships, using carefully orchestrated color palettes and precise forms. She abstracts people into geometric figures, depicting how someone feels in her mind, rather than how an individual looks. Often surrounded by depictions of native, introduced, and invasive species, these are both allegorical and literal illustrations of human-caused environmental change. Of her work, Kate Mothes writes: "Birdsong is keenly aware of her presence as a white person participating in the living history of American landscape imagery. Much imagery centers around spaces where Indigenous communities have been displaced, often brutally, by European settlers throughout the last few...

Artwork