Mary Heilmann, an American painter whose work was characterised by a playful and integrative approach to different artistic disciplines, has died at the age of 86. Her works reflected her earlier dedication to ceramics and sculpture, disciplines that profoundly influenced her painting practice.
In a Heilmann exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 2016, visitors had the unusual experience of viewing artworks whilst moving around in wheeled wooden chairs. These chairs were also artworks. One of them, titled Sunny Chair for the Whitechapel, was created especially for the occasion. Roughly carved from plywood, covered with nylon mesh and painted bright yellow, it appeared deliberately haphazard both as an object and in its typology.
Heilmann discovered ceramics whilst pursuing her undergraduate studies at the University of California, Santa Bárbara, between 1959 and 1962. Ceramics occupied her first decade as an artist. This condition of being an artist with a heterogeneous past, according to her work, was shaped by much more than her choice of materials.