Patterson holds an MFA from the University of California, Berkeley and currently lives and works in Colorado. She has been awarded numerous Public Art Awards including commissions for the Westin Hotel and Convention Center at Denver International Airport, main entrance of the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL, Eccles Music Center at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, UT, main entrance of the UCSD Medical Museum, and others. While at UC Berkeley, she received an art department grant from the Berkeley Art Museum.
Heather Patterson's work is widely collected, appearing in an extensive range of private, corporate, and municipal collections worldwide. Her artworks can be found at the University of California, San Diego Medical Museum (San Diego, CA), Children’s Hospital Art Museum (Iowa City, IA), Union Denver (Denver, CO), the Hilton Waikiki (Waikiki, HI), the Bellagio (Las Vegas, NV), Peninsula Shanghai (Waitan), SONY (San Diego, CA), the Children's Hospital (Denver, CO), Hard Rock Hotel (Hollywood, FL), Wells Fargo (Beverly Hills, CA), Mandalay Bay (Las Vegas, NV), and Amber Bay, (China), Charles Schwab (Denver, CO), Kaiser Permanente (Dublin, CA), Mayo Clinic (Jacksonville, FL), the Denver International Airport (Denver, CO), among many others.
She has exhibited nationally through solo and group shows across the United States and recurring participation in major international art fairs and institutions including Art Basel/Art Miami Fair, Art Market San Francisco, the New York Affordable Art Fair, Sonoma Museum of Visual Art, Museum of Contemporary Art in Fort Collins, Arvada Center, and San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design. Her work is currently represented by Andrea Schwartz Gallery (San Francisco, CA), Susan Street Gallery (Solana Beach, CA), Walker Fine Art (Denver, CO), and KW Contemporary (Kennebunk, ME).
Statement
Spending a significant amount of time immersed in nature is essential to my foundation and is where I feel most grounded. Our climate and overall temperatures are shifting, and the data fascinates me. Focusing on mapping the natural landscape, my work is a documentation of the perpetually changing elements within our topography and the delicate balance between natural systems and human impact. I recreate geographic patterns that I find and then layer them to make up a new series of abstracted terrain. This morphing of forms incorporates imagery drawn from diverse natural phenomena including weather systems and changing weather patterns, topographic maps, animal migration patterns, cellular structures, satellite imagery, water movement patterns, natural growths such as lichen on boulders and ice formations, geological rock layering, and wind and cloud formations. I am particularly drawn to the recurring nature of these patterns, recognizing inherent similarities in their fundamental elements. The interplay between geometric and organic forms is central to my process. Through the application of multiple layers of paint, ink, pigment, and acrylic mediums, a sense of scale emerges, oscillating between the micro and the macro. Some layers are poured, allowing for chance and uncontrolled effects, while others are more structured to create deliberate, mapped responses to the underlying surfaces. The contrast and flow within these overlapping elements reflect my meditative experience in the dynamic landscape we inhabit and is a reflection on resilience, transformation, and the delicate balance required to sustain ecological systems.