As part of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art’s Southern Idiom series, I’m showing a series of paintings exploring William Adolphe Bouguereau’s Broken Pitcher (La Cruche Cassée). The project began as a reexamination of my feelings for a painting I’ve known and loved for decades, and has evolved into a study of portraiture, symbolism, and topology. In many of the portraits, the pitcher has been replaced with a Klein bottle—a non-orientable surface with no boundary.
What: At the Well: New Paintings by Ellen Heck
Where: SECCA, Winston-Salem, NC
When: May 30 – June 30, 2019
Ambiance: into the multiverse meets 19th century portraiture
