Heather Rubinstein

Region: MFA Annual

Website: http://www.heatherbause.com

City / State: Houston, TX

My work signals its history from the material properties of fabrics—what happens when the fabrics are subjected to various procedures: cutting, folding, sewing, staining, dyeing, and brushwork. For my purposes, domestic fabrics such as bedsheets or drapes (always sourced from thrift stores) work better than traditional canvas. I like their porousness and flexibility as well as their status as recycled, repurposed products. My paintings are informed by postwar European abstraction (Alberto Burri, Supports/Surfaces, Sigmar Polke) and the Pattern & Decoration movement, but I try to avoid citation. I think I work like a phenomenologist. Consciousness is “intentional,” that is, directed toward concepts, thoughts, ideas, images from a certain perspective. My certain perspective is that of painting in all its states, not as an object but as our experience of that object.