Heather Green

Against all odds: MA Painting student finishes course

"If you had asked me when I started in 2019, I never would have been able to predict what kind of experience I was going to have at the RCA. Whatever timeline I had set out for myself, whatever direction I thought my practice was going to go in...

I was wrong.

I didn't think I would transfer my RCA studio to a paddling pool in my garden. I didn't think I would complete my dissertation without access to a library. I didn't think I would ever make it to second year.

But I did do all of those things.

When I returned, it was to a place that was simultaneously familiar and entirely alien. Everything I thought I knew about myself and my practice was different. It was a bigger challenge than it ever felt before, one that could have defeated me if it were not for the unfaltering support and encouragement of my studio-mates and tutors.

I am older, wiser(?), and despite it all I am still painting!

It feels so odd to finally be at the end... Or is it the beginning?"

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Heather Green (B.1993, Middlesbrough) currently lives and works in London.

She studied her BA in Painting at UAL Wimbledon College of Arts (2013-2016) where she was awarded the Landmark PLC painting prize 2016 and was shortlisted for the Clyde & Co. Art Awards 2016. She was recently shortlisted for the Fribourg Philanthropies prize 2023.

Everything that is still (hiding) in this immense treasure

News articles provide an entry point for the eerie or uncanny, that the title should become its own mark within the painting as much as any brushstroke or pour. Language has significance. Every word or phrase I extract from each story is infused with the social and political concerns contained within it.

There is a ritual in news reading where I find surprising comfort. I situate myself among the stories of the world while existing in my own.

She always wears a broad smile that masks quiet determination

I have been recognising patterns of anxiety and self doubt, creating a system of rules that allow me to break through moments of hesitation or conflict, and instead establish a foundation of action.

To be in control of something is to have influence over it, to have the power to establish the scope of possibility. I am the authority and every piece is a reflection of my internal battle for control.

A strange competitive edge creeps into the playground

Every piece is an individual, yet across the series there is an undeniable resemblance. Not every piece contains every element of the other, but there is a system of interconnected traits that are gradually expanding into a lineage.

I am challenging conformity and entertaining incoherence.

There is nothing I can't do.