Julie Heffernan’s allegorical paintings are filled with fairies, foliage, animals and creatures of all kinds. Her lavish surfaces and meticulous compositions, borrow from the grand historical styles of still life, portraiture and landscape. In Self-Portrait as Random Being she engages the viewer with her narrative appeal by overflowing the pictorial surface with an abundance of visual opulence. The Self-Portrait is not literal; the symbolic references are a means to examine issues deeply personal and important to her such as feminism, gender, motherhood and class structure.

Julie Heffernan’s current solo exhibition Vantage Point II, Julie Heffernan: Interior Transformations, Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC is on view through September 2004. Grants include New York Foundation for the Arts and National Endowment for the Arts. She participated in the Art in Embassies Program, Prague, Czech Republic in 1995 and has been an Assistant Professor of Fine Art at Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ, since 1998. More information at www.littlejohncontemporary.com