ADAIR HEITMANN
Art served as an act of healing and connection between myself and our young son in 2003 after my right breast was removed to cure the breast cancer in it. I didn’t want a reconstructed breast. Surgical implants couldn’t replicate the natural beauty of my former, fabulous breast.
One morning, our then, five-year-old son, Aren, wanted to paint with me. We settled in, around our kitchen table, with our individual watercolors, brushes, and paper. Aren spontaneously says to me, “Mommy, will you paint me a picture of a woman who has lost her breast?” Without premeditation, I created this painting. Seeing it, our young son said, “She looks like you.”
My husband and I had been honest with our curious, sensitive child. We did not follow cultural norms of hiding my medical realities from our son. We shared them in age-appropriate ways. We followed our holistic understanding of disease, identity, transformation, and recovery.
As a mother, of course, I would paint what our son asked. The act of creating the artistic expression, that bubbled up unplanned brought me great solace.
Our young son had the self-awareness to ask the question, I had the courage to respond. For our five-year-old son to acknowledge the watercolor painting with such poise demonstrates the intersection of art and love.
In 2020, a new breast cancer appeared and my second breast was removed. Before I lost my hair to the side effects of chemotherapy, our son and my husband gathered with me in our kitchen and shaved my head. Afterwards, our 22-year-old son shows gentle strength and respect as he brushes off my head after it was shaved. He spontaneously used a favorite paintbrush of mine to reverently do this. His deep understanding of care continues to this day. Photograph by my husband Arne Heitmann.
I Stand Before You Today, Watercolor painting, 5 x 7 inches, 2003.
Reaction to Overturning Roe v Wade, Adair Heitmann, Engraving, 6 x 6.75 in.
Like a spinning chainsaw to the neck of every woman and girl, overturning Roe v Wade makes us cower and fear for our lives by not being able to speak up for ourselves about our own bodies and knowing what is right. It also enrages women and girls, it makes us scream out and confront the overturn. Yet, we are still trapped, paralysed, and fearful because we are being denied our human rights to think for ourselves and govern our own bodies. The face looking away in despair and the face turning to scream at the chainsaw of the current political system are the same woman.
Daddy's Girl
This lithograph is about generational silence and incest. With the overturning of Roe v Wade, even cases of pregnancy from the rape of incest are questioned. What????? How dare that happen, it is so wrong.
Daddy's Girl, Adair Heitmann, Lithography, 12 x 17.5 in.
Unwanted Pregnancy
Without the right for a woman to choose and care for her own reproductive rights she will face the hardship and agony of carrying a baby to full term. Then having to make the decision to keep a baby that she may not have enough money or time to support and care for or to be forced into making a decision to put the baby up for adoption. What man has EVER had to endure an unwanted pregnancy for nine months and then be faced with deciding the aftermath. What man in the world has EVER BEEN PUT IN THIS POSITION?
Unwanted Pregnancy, Adair Heitmann, Lithography, 11 x 16.5 in.
I am a 69-year-old female classically-trained visual artist who works in printmaking, photography, and media arts. My printmaking uses traditional techniques of lithography created on large and heavy slabs of Bavarian limestone and engravings, incised into metal plates. Both techniques involve the fact that water and oil don’t mix, they are inked, and editions are printed on thick paper using a hand generated printing press.
While my art techniques are long-established, my subject matter is unconventional and modern. My work explores identity, gender, and self-acceptance. I don’t shy away from hard topics. While I grapple with intense emotions, I allow for nuance. Some of my most controversial pieces come unbidden from my unconscious, they come out of a wellspring of awareness in the actual act of creation. Others start as seemingly mindless doodles, that when I look into them further, I see great depth revealed.
I believe a picture is worth a thousand words. Simplicity of line, form, and function can evoke multilayered messages. There is storytelling in art, each of my pieces tells a story. Creating my art is therapeutic, it gets my feelings out there. I strive for my art to express personal emotions while sharing universal messages. I’m an advocate for tending to the wellness of the soul. My work is exhibited internationally and online.