15 Bytes November 2001 page 3 Jeff Hein, March of Dimes Fundraiser

Although still not finished with his degree, Hein has already produced portrait work that shows an adroit control of his medium, a sensitive eye for color, and an energetic sympathy for his subjects. Mary Pickett Pierson of the Magpie Gallery purchased a portrait of her daughter from the artist, and, along with Dunford, has expressed her continued confidence in this artist's work by giving him the show now hanging in the gallery. Along with portraits, both large and small, the show also exhibits a number of small landscapes.

AOU: What about the landscapes. Is that a recent thing for you?
HEIN: Yeah, I just started doing that about six months ago. It’s a way to go out and hang out with my buddy who I paint with and just to loosen up. Because portraiture, it's like brain surgery. Even though it's fun, it's excruciating sometimes.
But no one cares if a tree is accurate to a sixteenth of an inch. So going outdoors and painting is a nice way to say, “Man I'm gonna just start throwing paint on the thing." It’s not that I don’t enjoy painting people. I’d much rather do that, but sometimes I need a break.
AOU: Has working that way, working outside, affected the way you paint?
HEIN: Yeah. The thing is, when I paint outside I always have my figure painting in mind, I’m always thinking of new ways to apply paint. For instance, the way I paint a group of trees in the background, I’ll use that brushstroke and put it into a figure. I’m always trying to experiment with brushstroke because I think that’s critical, whether painting a landscape or a portrait.

AOU: What has been your experience so far with doing the portraits?
HEIN: It’s funny, with portraiture, it can look dead on like the person, but if it's not the way the client sees the person -- that smile they always do or the twinkle in the eye that they always have -- then to them it's not the person. So that’s a major struggle. I’ve been thinking about different ways to tackle that problem. I’m probably going to start trying to go out to dinner with the people I’m painting or something. Just spend a day with them. Get to know them.
Because with people I know it's different. My wife is no problem. It doesn’t have anything to do with the features. It has to do with I know who she is.
I’ll continue to do portraiture because it's secure, but my passion is just painting people the way I see them, the way I want to.
AOU What do you hope for your art, where do you see it going?
HEIN: I’m kind of going in two different directions right now. What I want to do is start painting people and painting their features, and capturing character in their face, but leaving it ambiguous enough that it's interesting to other people. For example, the painting of my wife [in the photograph below ] -- she got up in the morning and got dressed to go jogging, and to me it was immediately an interesting painting more than it was a portrait of my wife. I was like, okay, what is this about? It's about a woman who is not dressed up, she’s not going out to dinner or a movie; she’s going about her everyday activity and I thought that would be an interesting painting -- take a shot of a woman about to go onn a run. I’d like to do more of that; say, a person playing a guitar on a street corner. It’s a portrait of that person but it's more about what they’re doing than who they are.
AOU: So do you see it being about the general or the specific?
HEIN: Well, it's about that guitar player. I want to capture their personality and their face. A lot of painters will paint a figure and they will leave the face completely unresolved to kind of separate it from the viewer. But what I want to do is to paint a person where I can paint their face and really concentrate on their face; have it be a portrait of that person. But then I want it to be about them and what they do rather than “This is my cousin Joe” . . .
I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know how I’m going to do it yet. I guess I want to make something that’s interesting to everybody and still is a specific face.

AOU: And the other direction?
HEIN: I’m starting to do some narrative stuff. The first two things I’m doing are New Testament things, which in Utah should have a good audience.
AOU: But do you fear getting labeled an LDS artist?
HEIN: I don’t think so; it's not going to be my thing. And I’m going to do them different. I want to paint them like I paint my portraits and put a contemporary feel to them, not concentrate on the details of the costumes. I’m more interested in the expression of the characters. I'll be more concerned with colors and fabrics that help my painting composition than making sure they're authentic . . . I want it to be an extension of what I'm doing with my portraits.

Hein's excitement for the future is obvious. Despite his cordial welcome and eagerness to chat, one can not help feeling that we are intruding, taking up precious time which he could be using to develop his ideas. He is a child given a hundred dollar bill and set free in a toy store. He has the skills and the concepts and now needs only the time to give them flesh.

AOU: So, when you finish school, do you have plans to go back to New York?
HEIN: I used to swear to it. But, you know, things happen. I get taken in different directions all the time. I never expected to buy anything in Utah, but then we bought this condo.
AOU: You put down roots?
HEIN: Exactly. Things are going good here so . . . we’ll see. I want to go back home, but I’ll stick around here for awhile.
AOU: What are your hopes? What are you going to do to go about “making it?”
HEIN: That’s a dang good question . . . I’m just gonna keep painting and hope it happens.

JEFF HEIN'S WORK WILL BE ON DISPLAY UNTIL NOVEMBER 17TH
AT THE MAGPIE'S NEST, I STREET AND 1ST AVENUE, SLC.