Washington based artist Andrea Joyce Heimer classifies her work as “outsider art”, or paintings of strange suburbia. Her solo exhibition at the Good Luck Gallery in Los Angeles, “Suburban Mythology: Volume 2”, is a continuation of her main theme: every day dramas full of dark humor, based on real people and events in Heimer’s life. Her simple and flat visual style recalls artists like Mark Whalen, Mel Kadel, or Deedee Cheriel, but this can be mis-leading. Heimer fills her scenes with personal symbolism. Her lengthy titles, which read like some eloquent teenager’s diary, give us a hint: “I Went to School with Genevieve who Join Us Part Way Through The School Year. Her Father Had A Secretive Government Job & Her Family Had Last Lived In Thailand. She Was Exotic & Likeable & Even When She Openly Picked Her Nose In Class We Regarded the Act As Some Enlightened Ritual. Genevieve Had Too Many Sisters To Count, Each More Beautiful Than The Last, With Hair Like Spun Silk.” Others tell us about her first crush at age sixteen and the unusual behavior of her neighbors while growing up in Montana.
“Suburban Mythology: Volume 2” by Andrea Heimer is now on view at the Good Luck Gallery through April 11.
detail
Praeteritum Nunc Futurum. Translation: Past, present, and future. Tomorrow night, 
This Saturday, 
Each of Andrea Joyce Heimer's acrylic paintings begins as a written story. Even if the viewer isn't able to know every detail of her narratives, the painter's work gives us the chance to piece her myths ourselves. The artist offers some personal reasons why this process is so integral to her practice:
Blending two- and three-dimensional forms, Mark Whalen creates cerebral and absurd arrangements of the human body. Whether stacking vibrant heads or using sculpted hands to sculpt the very shapes of canvases, there’s a metatextual component in tackling the act of creating art itself.