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Tayo Heuser’s aspiration has always been to merge line and color in such a way that does not end in representational imagery but rather opens the door for the poetics of the imagination. Her abstractions hover between the need to meticulously render geometric shapes and intuitively express her feelings. The precision with which Heuser’s lines are drawn engage both her mind and body. Heuser holds her breath as she draws each line and releases the breath to replenish her nib with ink or brush with paint. Her mind rests in a meditative space throughout the process of working through a myriad of abstract pathways and gains insight into an unconscious world where colors and geometric forms emerge. Heuser’s work aims to represent and communicate the reverberations and energies that are released during these moments of profound solace and quietude. She is engaged in finding a visceral depth and a quiet rhythm. Heuser never knows where her work will lead her as she responds to each mark and color. There are elements of chance, doubt, loss, and finding that untouched courage that guide her, it is her own language that searches for the absolute. It is a world in which Heuser hopes the sensitive observer can enter unfettered, releasing a heightened perception.

Heuser’s research includes art works from all cultures and time periods that summon the human spirit. It is from these points of confluence that her work takes shape.

 

Heuser is a world citizen having been raised in various countries in Africa and Europe including recent travels to Japan. Therefore, her identity transcends her geography and political borders. Her art work is a confluence of her cultural experiences both visual and spiritual. Heuser describes her paintings as portals in that they represent a world of infinite possibilities allowing time for reflectivity and timeless tranquility. Her work addresses the central theme of cosmic balance between light and darkness, spirit, and matter.

Her most recent exhibition was at Space 776 in NYC 2023. Presently her work is featured at the Phillips Collection Entrance Lobby where she had had a yearlong exhibition with the Intersections program and has since been included in group shows there as well.

Other museum exhibitions include the Weatherspoon Museum, the Rhode Island School of

Design Museum, the University Art Museum at Long Beach California, the Chasan Museum of

Art and the Newport Art Museum. Recent exhibitions include the Jamestown Arts Center in 2021 and in 2020 (solo in 2016), the Jason Jacques gallery in San Francisco (Fog Design +Art 2020), Odetta gallery 2020 in NYC, The UMass Dartmouth Gallery, MA ( solo 2018) amongst many others.

Her work has been exhibited internationally in Brussels at H29 Gallery and CCNOA and at the

Chateau de Fernelmont.

Heuser’s work is in the permanent collection of The RISD Museum, Providence RI, the

Weatherspoon Museum, Greensboro, NC, The Hammer Museum Los Angeles, CA, and The

Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. Other collections include the American Embassy in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the Leeds Foundation Philadelphia, PA, and the Werner Kramarsky Collection in NYC, amongst many other private collections. Heuser’s work has been featured in several publications including, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Art New England, Artscope, The Boston Herald, La Libre Magazine, Le Soir, the Washington Post, Providence Journal and numerous online sites.

 

Jacqueline Ott’s work is abstract and an ongoing series of series. Images, marks and structures are visual elements Ott uses to create a system. The elements determine the system and the system opens the elements to infinite variations and mutations. The work follows the logic of the system on which it is based. “Over Head and Ears” features work from several series that, though different, are related through repetition of form, mark, or structure.

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Jacqueline Ott is an artist in Providence with a studio in Pawtucket RI. Born in Camden, New Jersey, she received a BFA from University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; Newport Art Museum, Newport RI; and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. Corporate collections that include her work are Fidelity Investments, Meditech, Boston Ritz-Carlton Residences, the Dialysis Centers of Rhode Island, and Edwards and Angell, Providence RI. Awards she’s received include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fund, a Rhode Island State Council for the Arts Fellowship in Drawing and Printmaking, a Rhode Island State Council for the Arts Fellowship in Painting, and a Rhode Island State Council for the Arts Artist Project Grant.

She was an adjunct faculty member at RISD for nine years and more recently taught at Brown University and Roger Williams University. Her work has been exhibited in New York, Philadelphia, Providence, RI, Boston, MA. and Abu Dhabi.