“When I was about seven, I went away to camp and our art counselor taught us how to do ‘Modern Art’ by drawing loopy lines around and around the page and then filling the loops in with different colors. I never forgot that.” Mary Heilmann, 2010

It is hard to place Mary Heilmann within the traditional narrative of contemporary art, as she has never conformed to the ideals set forth by the Color Field painters, Minimalists, or Expressionists. Heilmann’s approach to painting is uniquely autobiographical when compared to that of her peers, as she imbues the formal elements of geometry, color, and surface, to evoke a time, memory, place or future projection about herself and experiences. As the artist herself explains, “Behind my choices of color, surface and scale there is always a memory of a place or event – and through concentrating upon the sense and mood of that memory, I try to let the painting have the feeling that memory has for me.” (M. Heilmann, quoted in The Fortieth Biennial of Contemporary American Painting, exh. cat., Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1987).