Heidi Daub Studio Tour

Earlier this spring I had the opportunity to make a day trip up the Maine coast to visit gallery artist, Heidi Daub, in her Blue Hill studio. It was wonderful to be immersed in Heidi’s creative world for an afternoon. Not only does she spend her days painting in her charming two-story studio just steps away from her home, Heidi also writes, journals, and plays music there as well. I love being able to now picture Heidi at the piano (one of her instruments that graces a corner of the studio) surrounded by her paintings on the wall, journaling or playing while she takes a break from painting. I’m grateful she opened her doors to her lovely studio and welcomed me into her uniquely inspiring world.

Heidi writes with great thought and care about her work and creative pursuits. Scroll down to learn more from her about her process, influences, and more.

What drives you to create?
Being human! To fulfill a need to make sense of the world. To explore and share the mystery and miracle of being alive. Currently, and what I have found over the years, is that the creative work, the act of painting and writing, music and movement, provides a grounding in my life, and is both a joy and a necessity.

Engaged in the interplay between various artistic disciplines, my paintings evolve from a stilling and attunement, coupled with an urgency to render our interdependence with the natural world. The resultant images of coalesced line, form, color and movement are a discovery born out of the complexities of love and daily experience.

What currently inspires your art?

My current series is entitled the Confluence. Some thoughts about this series from my spring newsletter:

...."Like the Chenango and Susquehanna rivers of my hometown, with their miles of rushing water that bring all life with it, through storm and drought, generation after generation, it's been a year of confluence. Creatively music has poured into movement, movement into painting, painting into poetry. Societal confluence–gifting, giving, among individuals and community and back again. Passages– the womb to the breathing world, the breathing world to the spirit world; the overlapping veils of structure where all these transitions come together, converge. And all along the confluence, time becomes negligible; light years or nano seconds...'ceremony time' my partner likes to call it. And within these wavering weavings of time and generations the Guest House arrives. The holy ever-present is in the water, is on the muddy banks, in the streaming air and fiery sun, is in us, as the rivers flow to the wide seas– inviting; a buoy, a coming home."

Having compiled two collections of original paintings and poems in book form and catalog, I am also presently working on a compilation of prose, poems and paintings from my last three series of work: The Calling, The Everyday and Confluence. 

I am profoundly influenced/inspired by the matrix of the natural environment and all entities other than human without which we wouldn't exist. All creatives inspire me. My community and family, my husband, daughters, and now grandchildren; our relationship. Indigenous peoples of the world, their history and knowledge. Spontaneity, movement, serendipity, spirituality.

And more and more, the gratitude I have for being able to create, is in itself an inspiration.

How do your surroundings influence your work?

Raised in Binghamton New York, Haudenosaunee territory (Onondaga,) until the age of 17, near the confluence of the Chenango and Susquehanna rivers, I was aware early on, (as most young children are) of the grandness and magic in the surrounding hills and valleys, rivers and creek beds, hardwoods and pines. From ages three - seven my memories are of the environment outside a hillside apartment we rented. It was a lower level walkout and all our windows and daylight came from one side that looked out on a small yard then a slope to a creek nestled among tall pines and thickets. A wooded hill rose up on the other side of the creek, and I believed, as a small child that over the top of that hill was the other side the world! I remember being held on my mother's hip, and experiencing the grey light of early spring and thinking the world was ending or maybe just beginning. Those early environmental sensations and memories figure so deeply into my orientation as a person and I feel are the foundation, or 'the root' of many of my paintings.

Maine became an exploration of coastline for my husband and I back in the mid 80's, a place where we put down roots as a family. The work of Marsden Hartley, and John Marin's Cape Split called to me. The raw, wild, rural terrain; the light which held a whiteness and clarity, felt like a beacon. Settling on the Blue Hill peninsula, Wabanaki territory, our three daughters were born and raised here. We've renovated three houses and built three from the ground up, clearing trees, hauling brush, harvesting granite, building with stone. Most often we were the only crew. In the past we lived many years with no electricity, phone, or running water, and a wood cookstove for cooking (still cook with wood!)

I journaled and painted throughout those years of rustic living, as well as raising my two oldest daughters. Often my painting wall was on a large board propped outside, or on a wall in one room dwellings before I had a separate designated studio space in 1997. The influence of the ocean, and landscape I experience daily are found in my work and continually inspire me. My spiritual affinity with the natural world has grown deeper here and has become the warp and weft of my life, and therefore my painting.

How would you describe your work to a first time viewer?

Mystical, rhythmic, multidimensional, layered and deep. Landscapes from within.

What does your process look like?

Writing and painting go hand in hand for me. I've been journaling daily since college and into these notebooks go dreams, rants, timed writings, starts of poems, snippets of experience I don't want to forget, lists of things to do, sketches, direct observations. I feel that the paintings often come directly from this journaling process, almost like a substrate, a gesso, to the painting. After lining out my palette and readying my brushes, I generally just sit with what was done in the previous session. Then a sort of stilling practice ensues, a listening in an intuitive way. Sometimes this period is quick, other times I might write, play piano or lie down and close my eyes. While painting, sometimes chosen recorded music is played, other times I choose silence. Those first movements/strokes on a blank piece of paper or canvas, are so exciting and freeing, often using two hands or brushes to decipher what is being called forth. Working for a maximum of 4-5 hours in any one session (and in daylight hours,) usually the piece changes pretty dramatically from the first working to the second. The second session can see the painting upside down, or turned on a side to find its movement and balance, before being righted where it begins to take on more structure, depth of color, and starts to find its form. Paintings take various time periods to complete. Upon completion I like to live with a piece for at least a couple weeks to a month, to make sure it is still resonating for me.

Recently I've been working with video and integrating original poetry, prose, music and a combination of nature video with the paintings. I'm enjoying this merging of mediums and the editing process feels similar in some ways to painting, or refining a poem.

What response do you hope your art might inspire in a first time viewer?

I hope my paintings are an invitation to discovery. I want the viewer to experience an intimacy; the painting eliciting a stirring of their own mysteries and joys within themselves; something of their own aliveness awakened.

A big thank you to Heidi for participating in our Q&A! Be sure to follow along with Heidi on Instagram to see her latest work and snippets of her writing.