Heather Mattingly

My Background

My Medium and Techniuqe

As a young adult, I worked as a carpenter, a cabinet maker and a house painter. Demand for these skills dramatically increased following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and I spent the next 10 years renovating homes.

Inspired by my creative drive and desire to reduce waste, I began salvaging construction debris and transforming

it into found object art.

In 2018, I began exploring the art of fine painting with acrylics.

I taught myself painting techniques and moved into a style I think of as "paint assemblage". Years of assembling junk metal helped me develop a different way of seeing shapes, texture, pattern, and space. I approach painting in a similar way, applying brush strokes to canvas as if they were pieces of a puzzle.

My Medium and Techniuqe

My canvas pieces are created with acrylic paint. Mixed media pieces can include resin, wood, and paper. The tools I use are brushes, palette knives, and sometimes the tip of my finger.

I work from photographs and scenes from my imagination. My paintings are created with a vision of disassembling an image and reconstructing it with "pieces of paint" using vibrant colors, shapes, lines, dashes, and dots.

My Inspiration

My Medium and Techniuqe

My Inspiration

I enjoy spending time in nature and many of my pieces are influenced by Louisiana's cultures and landscapes.

I was introduced to the wetlands as a child and began explorations by foot on walking trails and by canoe in the Barataria Preserve. I was drawn to the swamp due to its magical and mysterious nature, as it is a unique ecosystem which supports diverse wildlife and plant life.

Louisiana themed subjects, such as swamp landscapes, native animals, flowers and birds continues to inspire.