BIO

Heather Lynne Seavey Brumund (CV.Brumund) is a California born artist with a European education, known for her drawings, engravings, paintings, installations, and mixed media sculpture marked with humor, both absurd and poetic observing human experience in a rapidly evolving contemporary world.  

She studied between Paris and Brussels, and was accepted in the studio of Jean Michelle Alberola at L'École National des Beaux Arts  of Paris in 2008, She was largely influenced by the live model drawing teacher James Bloede, assisting him in the translation of his book «Paolo Uccello and the representation of movement» that addresses pictorial composition. Exhibiting internationally since 2010, and collaborating with neuroscientist Dr. Jacqueline Bonds at the Art Institute of Chicago SIAC in her course "Language and the Mind; visual communication through composition" since 2014. 

Working with several mediums, currently focusing on painting and installation, each practice nourishes the creative process, allowing more flexibility with diverse plastic solutions to central questions; the celebration of life, the mystery of death,  and above all the complexity of social identity. Subject matter is a pretext, iconography in her work ranges from the universal day to day (food, clothing, the body) to personal esthetic obsessions (fish), avoiding complex iconology in her compositions to connect with any spectator in questioning the shared human experience in a rapidly changing world. 

Using what resources and inspirations she has at hand, having lived in several countries, hers is an immersive and reactive creative process, sometimes combining found objects with drawings, paintings and installations to comment on lived experiences and observed beauty that contribute to her vision of the world. She creates thus an imaginative often surrealist universe that gravitates around observation of the unspoken or forgotten detail, bringing attention to the beauty in the strangeness of the present; the crux of the human experience. Influences range from whimsical installation artists food sculptors etc:  Natacha Lesueur, Wim Delvoye, Erin Wurm, Michel Blazy, Bruce Nauman, William Wegman and Sarah Lucas to american and european painters such as William Merrit Chase, Diego Rivera, Henri Matisse, Wayne Thiebaud, David Hockney and Michael Borremans. 

STATEMENT:

The subject matter of my work has revolved around portraiture for a very long time, not of people at first, but of fish as a curious source of fascination possibly due to constant exposure to the aquatic creatures where I grew up on the California coast. 

Inquiries of this subject matter by my peers brought me to use it as a pretext to take on my conceptual focus and express questions about human experience; identity, life, death, and society. Through fish, a poetic allegory, and a commonplace being in the lives of many people, I have found a reference that allows the spectator to identify immediately with the work, I also quite often refer to art history but try avoid making of it an intellectual barrier. 'Der fish am meer,' 'hors context' and 'Sans titre', are a series of fish sculpture installations, staged in a way to allow spectators to personify them. The first  is a projected video of the suffocation of a fish (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIyAmdVDV4I ), the second (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryy4fCckJYc ) a fish chasing its tail in a small bowl facing the sea (with reference to Fredrich's famous work, Monk by the Sea), and the last, sans-titre, a sculpture made of a combination of classic art materials, sand, clay, linen and mackerel; actual cadavers that went for the most part unnoticed by the public. These pieces were accompanied by two paintings, one of a very large aquarium (5 x 7 meters) and the other of two decapitated fish (tetes de colin). The fact that these living beings can be purchased at a low cost, killed and exhibited with very little surprise or outrage on behalf of the spectator seemed to me very interesting .

A shift in geographical location and consequently, in subject matter, has brought me to Mexico City and a new series of oil paintings/installations centered around the nude or semi-nude model, the people more than the fish, a subject that has interested me since my entry at the ENSBA in 2008. Notwithstanding the same rather surreal combination of day-to-day commonplace iconology to evoke larger societal questions (the fruit and flower series is a reaction to censure through the elimination of my instagram account in 2017) and further questioning the role/identity of the human body in a world where images are ever more abundant and controlled in 'macho' society. The pieces are, as with many of my fish, executed with live subjects who have little to no experience as artistic models. It has become an almost social experiment, the discomfort or ease of each subject transmitted through their poses, the reticency of voluntary models because of the perceived sexual implications of being a ‘nude model’, what that implies for the value and role of the naked body, the differences between an image, a painting and a photo for art or for social media and between the sexes. 

EXHIBITIONS

2024 - retrospectiva colectivo en Paradero Conocido

2024 - ‘Dialogos’ group show at ‘Galeria Secreta’ Merida, Yucatan, Mexico

2024 - ‘Frutos Prohibidos’ solo show at ‘El paradero Conocido’, Mexico City, Mexico

2023 - ‘Just for the Birds’ decoration and inauguration of private residence, CDMX, MEXICO

2023 - ‘Escala Intima’ solo show at La Trampa Grafica Contemporanea, Mexico City, Mexico

2022 - ‘Curb Level’ group exhibition with Peter Garett Gunn, mortis studio, San Diego, California

2021 - ’SPARK’ - AGNI , Mexico City, Mexico

2021 - ‘Top RE COVERS’, Mexico City, Mexico

2020 - Salon ACME, Mexico City , Mexico 

2019 -solo exhibition- ‘Euphonious Jewels’ Brussels, Belgium

2019 - ’10 anos de la Trampa Grafica’ , Mexico City , Mexico 

2018 - ‘habito’ with Charlotte Glez, Pandeo , Mexico City, Mexico 

2018 -‘Seres Unicos' residencia vizcainas, Mexico City, Mexico

2018 - 'Morphemia' colonia centro,  Mexico City, Mexico

2018 - 'Identidades Exiliadas' Casa Espirituosa, Mexico City, Mexico

2018 - 'Erotica' Casa Rio Tiber 51, Mexico City, Mexico

2018 -‘X1' Casa Equis, Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico

2018 -solo show- 'Unsuited for general audiences' Diorama, Mexico City, Mexico

2014 - «fresh fish» Green Chalk Gallery, Monterey, California USA 

2014 - with the ICONITO association, Paris 75009, France 

2013 - exhibition with Marie Brumund, Natures mortes, Paris 5ème, France 

2013 - Diplôme Nationale Superieur d’Art Plastique, ENSBA Paris 75006 

2012 - association Couleur et Vie Réunion internationale de la couleur, Montélimar, France 

2011 - Diplome Nationale d’Art Plastique, ENSBA, Paris 6eme, France 

2010 - Exposition du Prix Paris Jeune Talents, Paris 14ème, France

RESIDENCIES

2016 - (April) participation with forum MIRARTE culture for peace (first edition) San Salvador, El Salvador

2015 - (January) Residency with the association Ida y vuelta,San Francsico de la Gotera, Morazan, El Salvador 

2014 - (October) Special permission for entry to the Vatican museums for preparatory drawings. Italy 2014 (August) Residency with Ida y vuelta, San Salvador, El Salvador

EDUCATION

2014 - Superior diploma received from the Van Der Kelen-Logelain decorative painting school, Bruxelles, Belgium (Silver Medal)

2013 - DNSAP (Diplôme National Superieur des Arts Plastiques) Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in Jean Michel Alberola’s studio (2011-2013)

2011 - DNAP - (Diplôme National des Arts Plastiques) Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in Jean Michel Alberola’s studio (2008-2011) 

2007 - París 1 - Panthéon - Sorbonne ( L1 arts plastiques), Paris , France 

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCES

2024 - assistant painter to Dr. Lakra for ‘Tupi or not Tupi’ Kurrimanzutto, CDMX, Mexico.

2024 - assistant painter to Ebecho Muslimova, CDMX, Mexico.

2023 - assistant painter to Paulina Olowska in Rabka, Poland, and Athens, Greece.

2021 - (since 2015) Guest speaker at School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SIAC), Chicago, USA «Language and the Mind; visual communication through composition»

2021 - mural for the Japanese American Citizens League of the city of Monterey, California , USA

2020 - mural for public Skate Park for the city of Fredrick , Fredrick, Colorado , USA

2019 - assistant painter for installation of Sol Lewitt wall drawing DW994 for Jumex , Mexico City, Mexico

2017 - (August) assistant painter for installation of Sol Lewitt murals, Gallery OMR, Mexico City, Mexico

2016 - ‘Murals for Peace’ participant in the first forum for Peace MIRARTE, San Salvador, El Salvador at the lycée Saint Francois Exuperi, San Salvador, and the Escuela Spécial de Mejicanos, San Salvador, El Salvador

2015 - Decorative painter (large scale theatrical decor and scenic design) Sfumato, Silla, Spain 

2015 - Decoration of the Hermitage/Chapelle of Santa Brigida, San Francisco de la Gotera,Morazan, El Salvador

2015 - (January) Guest speaker ‘preparing backgrounds and draftsmanship for decoration’ with El Colectivo Identidad Goterense, San Francisco de la Gotera, Morazan, El Salvador

2014 - Professional internship with decorative house painter RP. Tapp, Rugby, England

2014 - (August) Guest speaker at the Universidad de San Salvador, El Salvador ‘draftsmanship, presentation of a monumental painting project and on site preparation’

2013  - assistant and translator to Mr. James Bloede, professor of visual analysis l’ENSBA Paris, France

2011-13 - draftsmanship teacher for the Mairie de Paris 6eme (association sports et loisirs) 

2011 - Comala, Colima, Mexico Professional internship in Don Emilio Pinto Escobar’s ceramic studio in Nogueras 

2010-13 - Private cello instructor , París , France 

2008 - Gallery assistant at the Gallerie Claudine Papillon, 13 rue chapon, Paris 75003 (France) 

2005-17 - English professor (association Sports et Loisirs and the Mairie de Paris 6eme arrondissement from October 2010) , Paris , France 

2005-07 - Jeune fille au pair , Paris , France

2003-05 - Scenic painter for Pacific Grove Unified School District, Pacific Grove, California, USA