Currently studying Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University, Sienna Heasley (b. 2006) is an artist based in the Pittsburgh area working primarily in 2D media. Visualizing matters of the subconscious, Heasley ventures to personify the mind within her work. Concepts related to emotion, memory, and beyond seem difficult to summarize due to the unique ways they affect, connect to, and define our separate takes of existence. The imagination and internal landscape being as ineffable as they are, it is difficult to capture in words the subliminal experiences that we assume are singular to our own individual psyches. Heasley instead endeavors to depict these experiences through a collective visual language, positing that commonality can often be found between even the most incidental and personal thoughts and musings. Typically blending representational portraiture and abstraction, she connects the human figure to the immaterial landscape that is the mind. By further affecting this landscape with vivid color and visual maximalism, she aims to capture the chaos and multiplicity of emotional processing, allowing the viewer the opportunity to relate to both the experiences being portrayed as well as those shared amongst other audience members. Often drawing parallels to nature through symbology, Heasley further explores how balance and harmony can exist amongst wildness in the mind, just as patterns can exist within the ever-changing environment. While seemingly unpredictable, just as in nature, much that occurs within the subconscious landscape does not happen without reason. The mind can be viewed as a highly complex system, and in looking externally to nature, new pathways via which to think about the psyche’s way of operating can be explored. Ultimately, by placing the human figure within the transcendental and intangible landscapes she creates, Heasley draws comparison between our conception of the subconscious mind and our current natural reality.
EMAIL: siennadrawn@icloud.com