The creations of Heather Chontos are like worlds in themselves, made from fragments and chaos which she attunes and brings to life through light and colour. She creates from life and every piece of work is a lived presence, her emotions, rather than motifs or themes, unified into new and evolving environments.
Her art is not planned or calculated in any way. It is what comes naturally to her. She trusts her inner voice. She changes materials and scales, but the medium she chooses, linen, paper, wood, is always in close relation to the natural world – her art exists within it. And I believe this is one of the purest forms of beauty. And to be able to create art like that denotes not only a sense of respect, and even humility, for our world, but the deepest interior artistic enrichment. Heather Chontos makes art. She couldn’t be but the artist she is, fully aware that to exist here, now, means to be who she truly is. She has been herself from the first and the transformations that have taken place in her art have come from within. And I believe this is the highest form of art. She has found the liberty of being an artist, and to pursue whatever it is that there is to be found, her surroundings her open-air studio. When a shift of light, a look, a rare moment occurs, she will be present. Her curiosity always new, her passion not just for art, but for the possibility of giving an artistic language to emotion and life itself.
It is an honour to have Heather Chontos as my guest today. We talk about her journey in life and in art, about Peter Lindbergh and a different vision on visual storytelling, about light as an essential, departing element in her creative process, the gift of giving, and building a house, a studio and a garden in rural Portugal.
Photo courtesy of Heather Chontos
Heather, what is the best thing about working with your hands?
I have given this a lot of thought because working with your hands presents itself like a gift to a person. It is a personal luxury, but the most enjoyable thing is the freedom and independence it gives you. You can create what you desire from the source of oneself and this truly means that there is no need for an external intervention. It is very freeing.
An extraordinary form of freedom. I see your art as very intuitive in the use of different mediums. Is there a specific medium you prefer, and why?
I love to use materials that have a certain patina or texture to them. For a little while now, I have been playing a lot with painting on found wooden surfaces and I really love this. Materials that have been worn, weathered and/or used show their story on the surface and when you paint or draw on its surface, it sort of highlights these stories, wood especially, but also old papers and fabrics.
“I love the surprises, the un-known elements make for a different way
of navigating the dialogue between myself and the materials.”
Do you also think that wood is a surface, more than other materials, where more improvisations and surprises can occur, which can take you to new and unexpected places? And I am asking in regards to your painting on wood, but also in regards to your sculptures.
Yes, I love the surprises, the un-known elements make for a different way of navigating the dialogue between myself and the materials. I don’t enjoy the mundane, the familiar or the expected nature of sore bought materials and wood fits into this perfectly, especially found wood. I recently received a wonderful gift from a friend who found me this rounded triangular piece of wood that washed up on a beach. She said she saw it and thought of me. I have a great adoration for the beauty of materials in nature worn by time and experience. And yes, this is for me the same in painting and in my sculpture.
Photo courtesy of Heather Chontos
You like to experience with colour. Without trying to rationalise it, would you call it a natural partiality to colour?
It does seem that way. I often try to create something in a more black and white because I used to, all the time, but something internal won’t let me. It’s very infrequent that I feel satisfied upon the creation of something lacking in colour. I love the nuance of colour and its tonality. The slightest shift in the tone of one single colour can either bring together a composition to the harmonious dialogue I want to have with my work or it can throw it so far off that I can feel nothing but immediate offense or dislike for what I have made. That is a pretty powerful sensation.
I would like to talk a little about your Shinrin-Yoku exhibition, from 2021, inspired by the natural world, the forest in particular, and the Japanese language. Nature is often the point of departure in Japanese art, and it is probably not accidental that their language is also an art form. Thinking of your large scale paintings, expanses of strong colour and your attention to details from nature, I would like to ask: do you feel closer to Japanese art than other types of art?
Japan, historically, has such a thoughtful culture, such care, and it appears that they delight in beauty in the simplest of ways. The importance of expression through language, food, art, design, and also fashion often shares an inspired respect for nature and many of its forms and colours. So I would say it is not necessarily Japanese art that I feel most connected to, but rather it’s care and love for nature within their culture. I don’t really feel very close to any particular region for its art. I am generally not so interested in what other people are doing. Most of the art I feel most connected to was created by people who are no longer with us.
Would you care to share a few names with us?
Well, it most likely won’t be any surprise that I love Helen Frankenthaler, Cy Twombly, Miró, Sonja Delaunay, Ellsworth Kelly and my late friend Etel Adnan. I love Andy Goldswirthy, but he’s still here.
Photo courtesy of Heather Chontos. Shinrin-Yoku exhibition, 2021
“The slightest shift in the tone of one single colour
can either bring together a composition to the harmonious dialogue
I want to have with my work or it can throw it so far off
that I can feel nothing but immediate offense or dislike
for what I have made.”
Photo courtesy of Heather Chontos
What is your earliest drawing memory?
My earliest drawing memory would be a stick figure on a bathroom wall, but that was more like some rebellious experiment to see what I could get away with. My mother had a subscription to many different fashion magazines, Vogue, Elle, but most importantly at the time was Harper’s Bazaar. Thus was the time of photographer Peter Lindbergh who I worshiped. My walks were plastered with images from these magazines and I would add drawings and paintings to them. I loved Nadja Auermann’s face and would add to her images quite often. I was probably 10 or 11 at the time.
I love that you mention Peter Lindbergh and Nadja Auermann in the glorious days of fashion photography. And I do believe that his fashion photography, usually in black and white, and the way it was presented, in the pages and large spreads of the magazines, lent itself easily to storytelling and creativity and appealed to the imagination. Have we lost that today? And have you kept the magazines?
I am currently in the process of re-designing my website and the visual story it tells as if it were one of these spreads in a magazine. I am lucky enough to work with some amazingly talented people like the creative director Marsha Meredith of Madder Lake and photographer Jo Metson Scott. The visual cues are coming from this central idea of large scale pages of visual storytelling and the impact that it has. So I don’t think we have lost it, but we have lost this way of sharing our visual stories due to social media and the way we share imagery. It is, for example, when film went to digital and the time and quality was not used in the same way to get the final image. No more Polaroids warming under our armpits, instead, a band of pointed fingers around a screen at one of a hundred frames collected through a cable attached to the camera were analysed by teams of people saying “move this to the right”, “move this to the left” and then back again with the options of perfecting everything frame by digital frame. It lost the magic of chance of something happening that was un-expected, un-planned, that was so boring to me and so now some of that quality of content is forgotten and/or unknown by these new generations. I really sound like an old lady when I say this, but, for me, all of the magic was in the suspense and the imperfection of a captured moment and that feels a bit lost now, it feels like we concoct our content to ridiculous and unnatural standards. And it’s all the same, so boring. Does that make sense?
Photo courtesy of Heather Chontos
No, I don’t have the magazines anymore. I did for a very long time, but moving all around he world as I did with my girls made it impossible to hang on to these things, but I have these images burned into my brain. It was the start of my visual education and my love for the imagery.
Yes, it makes perfect sense. Everything is the same now, there is a uniformity in everything, from the way people dress to the visual and media content we consume. Making art with your hands, that enables you to deepen your relationship to the physical, real world, is one way to fight that, I believe. What else?
Taking care of animals and growing something you can eat. These are the best options to bring awareness to the depth of the actual world around us. Take care of an animal, love it, listen to it, see it, understand it, know it. It will change how you see everything if you are paying attention. Plant a seed or plant many, plant fruit trees, or a full vegetable garden. It is the purest form of reciprocity. It’s really so simple, give a little more of yourself and don’t ask for too much in return. Recognise the beauty in a balance of give and take.
Photo courtesy of Heather Chontos
“It’s really so simple, give a little more of yourself
and don’t ask for too much in return.”
Photo courtesy of Heather Chontos
Can you tell me a little about your background and the path that led you to making art?
Well, I have always made art in one form or another. I was always trying to make something. I cut up clothing to make new designs, I re-invented old books and magazines, I tried to build carpentry projects and at one point at age 13 I became obsessed with the shape and silhouette of the female figure. I would draw it on large pieces of cardboard I would find in the garage and depict it in chalk pastel, drawn and shaded to perfection.
My mother was always dealing in antiques and we were often out on weekends at flea markets treasure hunting. My mother was big into stenciling and painting stenciled birders all over the wooden walls of our old farmhouse in New York. My father worked for a gas and electric company but was also a carpenter and was always lovingly restoring our home by himself. He would tear down old abandoned barns that had collapsed and bring home the old wooden planks to re-do the floors. I feel like all of this influenced me greatly without realising it. My appreciation for materials certainly came from this. I was always curious and adventurous, an explorer that got myself into trouble many times, but always in a mode of discovery. I suffered an illness at 14 that caused complete blindness in both of my eyes for most of that year. It lit a fire to go out into the world and explore further. I left home at 16 to live with a family in Barcelona on an exchange program and it opened up a whole new world. My host family were creative in a new way, an architect and a fashion and textile designer. They introduced me to Miró and Tàpies, to a deeper understanding of Picasso and Dalí. I went on to study art history and conservation in London, I was always painting and drawing, completely self taught, but could not allow myself the freedom to say I was an artist. I wanted to fit into the mold of expectations, that I would perform academically and find a stable career. Fast forward to age 30, single mother of two little girls, a career in set design, prop styling and fashion illustration, I decide to pack that in and finally self-proclaim my self given title of “artist” and I have continued to work every day since this is truly who I am. I could never really be anyone else at this point.
Photo courtesy of Heather Chontos
“Going alone is something that not everyone can manage,
but when you find your true relationship with your work,
with your art specifically, you really don’t have
too many options, but to go alone.
Outside voices are noise.”
You studied art history, and yet it feels like you wanted to escape that in a sense. Do you believe that if you go alone, you can go further?
I studied art history out of some sense that I was truly an academic. I wanted the world to know that I was intelligent, that I was to be taken seriously. And when I was younger, this felt like a good way to do it, when truly all I wanted was to be an artist. I really don’t enjoy the analytics of art history, it is a lot of fluff and conjecture. I just didn’t understand that I felt that way until later. I started university at age 17 so I was very young. I really thought I was so very clued up, but I was not. I was a child, I was evolving, but still a child. Going alone is something that not everyone can manage, but when you find your true relationship with your work, with your art specifically, you really don’t have too many options, but to go alone. Outside voices are noise, a distraction and you have to truly trust yourself and listen to yourself, so, yes, you can always go further if you go alone because that is commitment and focus on a level that is necessary. I am married to my work, it is my relationship, that and my pups and horses, but truly I am in love with the dialogue of my inner voice and what I can create if I trust it.
Photo courtesy of Heather Chontos
You have an international background, having lived in many different parts of the world, from New York and London to Barcelona and France. You’ve already mentioned how living in Barcelona opened up a different understanding of art. Did you feel that living in a certain place left a defining mark on your work?
I used to think that travel and certain places were what inspired my work and, of course, many place inspired or triggered a certain sensation or response to the surroundings, but there is not one that truly left a defining mark, rather it is the collection of them all, the variation that gave me a great sense all of the possibility. I don‘t like to travel anymore because I don’t want to impact the Earth negatively now that I have a better understanding of how travel can damage her so profoundly. I want to stay home now, but these influences of all the wonderful cultures I have experienced from Africa to Southeast Asia to Eastern Europe and South America stay with me, opened up my heart and mind to all the beautiful cultures and worlds that exist out there and that will stay with me forever.
Where do you call home now? And where does an artist call home?
Currently I call Portugal home. I live in a very rural part of Eastern Portugal in the Serra Sao Mamede natural park, just over the border from Spain. I live with my youngest daughter Zana age 15. I am designing and building a house with my studio and a farm with my horses, dogs, and chickens.
I can only speak for myself, but, as an artist, “home” is wherever my heart takes me.
Photos courtesy of Heather Chontos
You started out in a different artistic field and you have also worked as a set designer. Was it film set design? I am a big film lover.
It started out in print, in fashion mostly, to begin with, and then interiors, then food. I was fortunate enough to work with some of the photography greats who had open minds to allow for true creative expression in the image they wanted to portray. When I became bored of the more calculated and less creative approach in the industry, I was lucky enough to move into television, but mostly commercials. At this time, I was more focused on my artwork by then and, though I wanted to get into film, I went full throttle for my painting. However, the moving image was much more fascinating to me because finally, again, there was an element of surprise. You could not control filming something that you threw into mid air, so it was exciting that something could happen by chance again. I still would love to design a film set, all the details, the props, the nuanced details, it would be so fun. Like in Poor Things, I was salivating over the set design and costumes, so incredible, truly a wonder. I loved that.
“I am in love with the dialogue of my inner voice
and what I can create if I trust it.”
Yes, Poor Things was a visual feast. We are craving for the unique and the unexpected. Do you have a favourite film (films), or one that has influenced you creatively?
This questions really stumped me because I needed to reflect on why I can’t say yes, I have a favourite film and it inspired me this way or that way… I have always loved film and been interested in it. I would go to the short film festival in New York City when I was a teenager and watch films from Ireland and Iceland and other parts of the world I had never been to. I am terrible with names so I can’t remember any of their titles. I loved La Grande Belezza, that was wild. I loved the visuals and sound in DUNE, I thought that was incredible and I watched it several times, which I never do, there was a combination of hitting all of the senses that was done so beautifully. The newer rendition of La piscine was also wonderful for many reasons, but again, the imagery struck me the most, I love a good story depicted well visually, something that hits my senses, but I can’t say any of them have ever necessarily inspired me on a whole. I tend to pick things apart visually and take the morsels of goodness that are the most delightful to me and leave the rest.
Photo courtesy of Heather Chontos
“Nature provides that for us, we have lost touch.
Sadly, most people are not paying attention to anything;
big or small, they are focused on some invisible end result or expectation
and they are missing out on everything in between, under and around them
that makes life beautiful and precious.”
Photos courtesy of Heather Chontos
In this time and age, what do you wish people appreciated more?
Well… where do I begin? Living here the way I do, in this rural pocket of Portugal, I don’t take anything for granted. It took 6 months to have a water and electricity connection. We collected our water every day from a local drinking well and schlepped it back home a few times a week. We had power only through a solar powered battery that we charged things with. I cooked outside on an open fire or with a camping gas cooker. These were the only options we had whilst everything was put into place and we made do, it was fun actually, most of the time. It reminded me of how we always just presume we will have these commodities, but there could come a day that we don’t have such easy access and it will shock very many people. It may sound cliché, but it is in the small things, the smallest of small things that we may truly find appreciation for what we have. Nature provides that for us, we have lost touch. Sadly, most people are not paying attention to anything; big or small, they are focused on some invisible end result or expectation and they are missing out on everything in between, under and around them that makes life beautiful and precious.
What brought you to Portugal? Was it that the chance presented itself or was it something you pursued intentionally? Is there a place you’ve always wanted to live and you have? There is another reason I am asking this and I am bringing Van Gogh into discussion, as he believed that artists should move to more southern (in his case, the South of France), primitive regions, in search of vibrant colors, which would help take their art to a new stage.
The sheer beauty of this region of Portugal and its affinity with regenerative farming and land keeping was my initial inspiration, that and the opportunity to have enough land for my horses, my dogs and a place to build my studio and house is what brought me to Portugal. Oh yes, and isolation!
I always wanted to live in Montana, and I have. I also always wanted to live on the Continent of Africa, and I also have done that.
Well, for me, Van Gogh was right because of the light you get in the more southern regions. I need to be where the light fills me up. It’s an impossibility for me to thrive creatively without strong natural light, but not all artists need that. I think if you are painting or creating in a way where this is what feeds you, then you must find a pathway to it. What is mist clear for me is that when you feed your soul you become better at whatever you are doing in life. This is always true.
“What is mist clear for me is that when you feed your soul
you become better at whatever you are doing in life.”
It is. I believe that the idea that impacts me the most about your art is that life itself is your canvas. Heather, one last question: what brings you hope at the end of the day, personally and professionally?
That is a beautiful compliment and a keen observation which I am grateful for. Thank you for these thoughtful questions which I have truly enjoyed answering.
What gives me hope is just watching nature grow and evolve, knowing the sound of each bird around me as if it were my own voice, understanding the needs and wants of creatures who cannot speak my language. These things are the innocent beauties of life and being able to watch them evolve and change closely gives me hope that somehow it will be ok.
Thank you, Heather. I’m deeply grateful for this wonderful experience.
Photo courtesy of Heather Chontos
heatherchontos.com | Instagram: @hchontos
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