Mary Heilmann's (born 1940) works on paper are suffused with the same sensibility as her influential abstract paintings, a casual playfulness animating a rigorous attention to form and color, resulting in joyful, evocative geometries. Their suggestive power reflects Heilmann's process of what she calls "daydreaming": a conjuring of the sights, sounds and events of past and future travels, the cyclical nature of memory informing her return to various motifs across nearly five decades of work.
Edited and with an introduction by curator Alexis Lowry, Mary Heilmann: Works on Paper, 1973–2019 includes an essay by art historian Jo Applin and a personal reflection by painter Ilana Savdie, together offering a compelling account of this previously underexamined aspect of Heilmann's practice.
Published by Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2025 on the occasion of the exhibition, Mary Heilmann: Daydream Nation, Hauser & Wirth, New York, May 2-July 26, 2025.