Box Frame - Optimist

36cm x 30cm.

A lifelong animal lover, Lucia Heffernan paints whimsical portraits of animals in all-too-human scenarios. The artist received a BFA from Binghamton University in 1989, and her detailed oil paintings have attracted a following for their gently satirical humor. Heffernan’s dressed-up, anthropomorphized figures from across the animal kingdom often engage in leisure activities: In the punny Roller Chick (2020), a fluffy bird 1980s-style and a boom box.

Heffernan’s work also nods to the giants of art history. Wall Street Gothic (2020) depicts a smiling bear and bull, the symbols of the stock market’s boom and bust cycles, in the style of Grant Wood’s iconic American Gothic (1930). Heffernan has exhibited work in galleries and fairs in the U.S. and Hong Kong.