AJ Heckman
BIO
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AJ Heckman is a resident and native of Columbus, Ohio. Heckman has been a creative arts specialist in special needs early childhood education since 2018. He earned his BFA in Studio Painting and Drawing from Ohio University.
Heckman led and performed in a band as a singer, songwriter and guitar player from 2006 to 2014. He continues to record and write music with his current band Locust Hill Sleepers.
As a PTSD, cancer and bipolar disorder survivor, AJ is a mental health advocate and enjoys doing awareness and fundraising work. Heckman's paintings and drawings sell nationally in private collections.
ARTIST STATEMENT
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My art practice is built on a drive to search the subconscious and reflect back hidden meanings and lost passages, leaving space for interpretation. Figuration, landscape, and abstraction blur as I source pre-historic art, nature, and archetypal imagery as inspirations that guide me through improvisational explorations of pattern, rhythm, line and emotion as color.
The work is a flowing river washing over psychic damages of mental disorder and disease, cleansing, healing and bringing deeper feelings up to the surface. Together my art and my practice serve as an outlet, a mirror and a place to feel the human condition and explore mortality. Most of all, my work is a celebration of life.
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