Cynthia Hellyer-Heinz is a full time artist and teacher. Her husband of thirty years, a ceramic artist, and Hellyer-Heinz work out of their home studio in Warrenville, Illinois. It is a place of creative dust. She has always made art and is fortunate enough to have had parents who recognized and encouraged her work. At age seven Hellyer-Heinz began taking classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. She earned a bachelor degree in Fine Arts from Pratt Institute. In the year 2000 Hellyer-Heinz received her M.F.A. from Northern Illinois University and has been teaching drawing there full time.
Hellyer-Heinz became involved with the health field through investigation of the physical effects of time on the body, she found a fascination with aging flesh. Not only is she observing age on the human anatomy but time’s impact on the organic matter in her surroundings. She is a committed gardener and often watch as the tomatoes ripen, to rot, to seed, to regeneration. Hellyer-Heinz witness the same cyclic effect on the matter of fabric and flesh. Her family and the nature encircling her studio have become the resource for her visual vocabulary. Hellyer-Heinz is inspired by continuous changes observed through inner-connectedness felt by engaging time and the positive metamorphosis of the body and spirit. It is possible to see the full potential of life in nature and she finds it imperative to offer this image to the viewer through drawing.
Regarding the seeming abundance of nature; we photograph, we paint, we hang it with reverence on our walls, yet we so easily dismiss the fragile, temporal aspects of nature. The sparrow, common and plentiful as the newspaper, the epic image of the forest, they are all a fleeting moment vulnerable to our human disposal.