Heiidi Tailleferr Tames The Muse In Her 1xDebut

1xRUN Thru Interview

The Muse by Heiidi Tailleferr

 1xRUN: Tell us a little about The Muse original piece, is it still for sale?

Heiidi Tailleferr: The Muse is painted on an original photo printed canvas, of a model lying on her side. The background, boy on a horse and body elements were painted overtop an an acrylic underpainting, then oil afterward, leaving a small photographic portion exposed. The intention was to juxtapose painted with photographic imagery but in the end even the photographic face and arms were painted over in oil as well. I usually base my work on sketches beforehand, but this piece was mostly painted directly onto canvas using many photographic references for each element in the work. The original painting of the Muse sold in 2009 for $10,000 via Joshua Liner gallery.

1xRUN: Can you tell us how the idea and execution came about?

Heiidi Tailleferr: The Muse was created in 2006 and was inspired by a relationship I was in with a charming elegant, attractive, and intelligent heir to a huge fortune who was not able to open up emotionally because of heartbreaking childhood traumas and subsequent adult relationship woes. He was also unable to let go of the relationship dynamic with me, into which he poured abusive and toxic resentment as well as love, attachment and admiration. Suffering from Aspergers syndrome did not make matters easier as it inhibits the normal course of connection, communication, and reactivity, and in the image, as the child cries longingly for a woman he both detests and adores, it is he who is in fact the Muse. The piece from start to finish took approximately three weeks to produce.

1xRUN: What is unique about this piece?

Heiidi Tailleferr: The Muse was part of a new phase in the evolution of my work, which started to include aspects of the human condition combined with the ubiquity of technological advancement throughout the world. In contrast to previous works which highlighted robotics and a hybridization with living beings, this piece marks a move up to include more philosophical questions on universal human struggles.

1xRUN: Why should people buy this print?

Heiidi Tailleferr:  People should buy this print because I feel it is one of the best works I have done up to date. It is elegant in its composition, content and form, as well as well-executed. So much of my work now rests on the importance of content rather than technique, and this piece is wonderfully oblique in its delivery, offsetting the immediate obvious assumption that it is the woman who should be the Muse, but most of all because of the real life scenarios which inspired it to begin with.

1xRUN: Describe this piece in one word for us.

Heiidi Tailleferr: Symbolist.

1xRUN: When did you first start making art?

Heiidi Tailleferr: My first experience as an artist was at the age of two, alongside that of my older brother who was equally complicit in tagging our bedroom wall with the contents of the diaper pail. We used Fisher Price figurines to stamp tiny circles that flowed in swirls along with finger painting, from which time I could not escape the passion of my true vocation.

1xRUN: What was your first piece?

Heiidi Tailleferr: By the time I was six, I went door to door selling more seasoned and mature drawings for a quarter. My only customer was Mrs Ducros, Susan Ducros (another babysitter)’s mother and officially my first collector. After that I took an almost twenty year hiatus before selling again to any appreciable measure, and happily by then my work had ripened itself into several thousand times more worth than those meager beginnings.

1xRUN: What artists inspired you early on?

Heiidi Tailleferr: Classical renaissance painters, as well as surrealists such as Dali, also Hijame Sorayama, who is a Japanse airbrush artist who depicts women and animals as highly polished chrome figures.

1xRUN: What artists inspire you now?

Heiidi Tailleferr: I would have to say I am inspired by the loose and figurative/abstract feel of Mars-1, as well as that of Oliver Vernon. I am trying to find a looser expression in my work, while maintaining the hybridization and philosophical direction I take overall.

1xRUN: Do you listen to music while you work?

Heiidi Tailleferr: I listen to a lot of radio. My circumstance is really odd, I am a kind of celebrity in Montreal and there are endless social dramas in my life which, thanks to technology, get flouted online easily and become somewhat of a telenovela. But i know many people who are well connected, and at some point the dramas I experience were made known to several radio hosts from our national radio station (CBC 1 and 2), and communiques get tweeted in and cleverly rehashed over the airwaves as a means of broadcasting innuendo and the like. It sounds incredible and unlikely, but much of it is broadcast out of a very tiny town in the Maritimes (Halifax) and as towns and cities shrink and networks overlap, it is as likely as if it were happening through college radio broadcasting over campus. Otherwise the studio is quite silent, or I listen to courses on any number of subjects on cd.

1xRUN: If you could collaborate with any living artist who would it be?

Heiidi Tailleferr: I would love to collaborate with Victor Muniz, even though our work is worlds apart.

1xRUN: If you could collaborate with any living artist who would it be?

Heiidi Tailleferr: I would collaborate with Artemisia Gentileschi, she was a female painter during the late Italian renaissance who achieved renowned in an era when female painters were not the norm or easily accepted. She often painted striking and beautifully rendered images of women in circumstances of power or surrender, identifying with the complexities of the feminine character.

1xRUN: What was the first piece you bought?

Heiidi Tailleferr: The first piece of art I bought was by a Montreal artist named Genevieve Guenette, who makes these really cool wood blocks styled in a variety of playful motifs. The one I have is a drain set in a seeming square section of bathtub, with hair slowly sliding down the drain and it’s all covered with a thick layer of clear resin.

1xRUN: What was the last piece you bought?

Heiidi Tailleferr: The last piece of art I bought is a Chris Mars print, called Community Pillars.

1xRUN: What else do you currently have in the works?

Heiidi Tailleferr: Right now I have a show coming up at Copro Nason gallery in early 2013. I’ll be showing a new series of doll sculptures based on the theme of EROS along with several oil paintings. The dolls are meant to encompass the vast spectrum of love with it’s endless distortions and well meaning intentions, by varying a single repeated model in color and costuming, and featuring a specific concept on Love each time. It is also a study in Hermetic Philosophy (Kabbalah), since it came about as a year long project to fashion Love out of the ethers, since the work seems to become a reality one way or another.  One major feature of Kabbalah is a principle of manifestation (the book The Secret is a commercial spin off of Kabbalistic principles).

This point is key, since it came in the wake of an initial targeting campaign and attempted assault (apparently homicide) in 2010, which unfurled into serious false vilification to motivate further attempts, which were finally brought under control by chance encounters with intermediaries who knew my would-be assailants (one of them was like a bodyguard so to speak). My approach with the dolls was at first sardonic, sad and forlorn as I recounted past foibles in love; the Unjustly Maligned, the Forsaken, the False Illusion, Homicidal Love, to overflowing Romantic Sentimentality, Self Examination, Justice, or Divine Adherance. The possibilities are literally endless, and they have became a Kabbalistic tool and exercise in correcting /controlling my circumstances and exercising manifestation capacities, as I attempt to paint a more conscious ideal and not just underline the tragedies and hypocracies of life. They are slated to be produced as collectible art dolls eventually, though that project that is still in the works.

1xRUN: Where else can people find you across the internette?

Heiidi Tailleferr:  Website – Facebook – Twitter – Behance –