Heidi Gruetzemacher has traced out the path to the heart and nailed it to the wall.
Her explorations on the topic are highlighted in Hearts Desire, an exhibit currently featured at the Valley Art Gallery. Back in September, the gallery moved from its previous home down Clark Avenue to a new-to-them space in Old Orcutt, right across from the bustling crowds at Naughty Oak Brewery and ice cream vendor Doc Burnstein’s. From the looks of it, the longtime Central Coast gallery may have hit a sweet spot for local art.
Gruetzemacher, a painter, photographer, and owner of the Frame Gallery in Orcutt, hosted a reception for the new show at the gallery space on Feb. 2. Her work features a variety of subtle abstracts and still lifes, muted shapes and figures giving way to bright colors and organic lines. In her series Beach Light, featuring four acrilyic pieces, Gruetzemacher captures the essence of the ocean’s horizon in different luminescence.
“Hearts Desire is an expression of color as paint that is then re-interpreted as digital media,” Gruetzemacher wrote in her artist’s statement. “The finished prints are then matted and framed as a continuation of the images created, to merge the artwork and presentation as one.”
Gruetzemacher’s buoyantly vibrant heart images seem to serve their namesake well, providing a center of balance for the large collections of paintings, sketches, sculptures, and other projects that surround her show within the new gallery space. Her piece, Path of the Heart, is a swirling breath of bright hues and able-handed expression. It’s not quite clear if the viewer is looking at a horizon or perhaps the inside of a capillary, and that’s the beauty of the work.
Gruetzemacher is skilled with restraint yet playful enough to let go of any formality of symbolism. The artist understands her palette and how to bring each color into a bigger existence on canvas. The work is delicate yet firmly skilled and eye-catching.
“I am not always sure what that next work will be or what it will mean to me,” she explained. “I do know that it will find my heart and that I will create it.”
Arts and Lifestyle Writer Rebecca Rose’s heart’s desire is hazelnut gelato. Contact her at rrose@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 15-22, 2018.