In Sophia Heymans’ visionary landscapes, the Earth and its human inhabitants have merged in painted harmony. Now indistinguishable from one another, they form a hybrid entity that reveals our shared interdependence with the natural world, and it with us. In this new realm, every tree, pond, raindrop, and star is dancing, completely absorbed in movement and filled with wild joyful energy.
In Heymans’ work, mystical comparisons between humans and the natural world around them are composed and rendered in oil paint mixed with seeds, grass, and twigs primarily gathered from the prairie grasslands of Minnesota, where Heymans grew up. These adornments give her works an added physical depth and texture and also highlight our deep interconnection to the landscapes we inhabit.
Each new painting is a collaboration between nature and the artist. As Heymans describes, “This series of paintings is about the fleeting feeling of breaking completely free, like when I’m deep in the wilderness, away from everyone. I find the same energy and level of communion when I am deep in a crowd of people dancing. Something about these wild, unpredictable places helps me open my mind and remember what is real.”
The dreamlike scenes unfolding in Everything Dancing at Shrine range from representations of night slipping immaculately into day, to thunderstorms lighting up the sky, and euphoric moments witnessed during the magic hour when the last threads of sunlight are the longest. In each of these settings, the natural world has forgiven our missteps with her care, and she now embraces us in a slow dance or bops along in Heymans’ cosmic mosh pit of hope.
