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.
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.
Adair Heitmann, BFA is an award-winning artist, author, storyteller, and educator. Her fine art (painting, printmaking, photography, mixed media) is in international collections and exhibited worldwide. She is a recipient of a Connecticut Office of the Arts Artist Grant. Heitmann’s poems and essays are published in print anthologies and online journals. She creates and performs true adult stories for the stage and has been selected to perform with The Story Collider at UNDER St. Marks Place, NYC and with Generation Women at the Public Theater/Joe’s Pub in NYC. Heitmann received a Storytelling World Honor Award, numerous awards for her fine art, and awards from the National Federation of Press Women. She is Poet-in-Residence in under-resourced elementary schools and teaches creative writing in colleges. Heitmann is a graduate of The College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. She lives on the coast of Connecticut, US with her husband and embraces visits from their adventurous son.