The Naturalist
Heather Brown does not just use water as a subject for the paintings she exhibits in galleries around the world, she lives in it. The 36-year-old artist from California has called Hawai‘i home for 10 years, has surfed for nine and is even a bona fide scuba dive master. If that isn’t enough, she works in her two story house in Maunalani Heights, where she lives with her boyfriend-slash-manager Chris and their 1-year-old English bulldog Marley, and regularly paints in front of a vertigo-inducing view of the Honolulu coastline.
The house is bright and open, with surf boards propped up in every corner and gicleés – advanced reproductions of her oil paintings – lining high white walls. The totally unpretentious artist, who is building a name for herself in Hawai‘i, California, New York and Tokyo for her deconstructed illustrations of surfers and waterscapes, has gone from selling her first painting on eBay for “$30 or $40 bucks” to commanding up to $15,000 for an original piece.
The super smiley and laid-back artist talked to FLUX about traveling to tropical destinations, why time machines are superior to teleporters and how she loves sharing a piece of Hawai‘i with the rest of the world. The more we talked with her, the cool breeze coming in through the window on a perfectly clear Saturday afternoon, the more we realized – the girl has a lot to smile about.
