Valerie Hegarty

American Beserk, Valerie Hegarty's exhibition at Burning in Water continues her talented construction of a darker side of American history. Notions of dissolution, destruction and decay are engaged through her trompe-l'oeil painting style in which landscapes dissolve and George Washington becomes a topiary.  Heidi Harrington-Johnson wrote in her critic's pick for ArtForum 

Hegarty intelligently references Raphaelle Peale, considered the first painter of still lifes in America, in a number of her grim watercolor works, such as Watermelon Gothic 1, Fruit Face, and Picnic Body (works cited, 2015). In the latter pair of edibles-as-people pictures, one can’t help but see homages to Giuseppe Arcimboldo, the sixteenth-century Italian painter whose portraits of notable Renaissance figures, rendered as agglomerations of vegetables, fish, and books, among other items, are more horrifying than charming. more

Valerie Hegarty, George Washington Topiary, 2015 Watercolor on paper, 12 × 9 in

Valerie Hegarty, Ghost of History, 2015, 9 x 12"