Turn Me Into a River
Artists: Makenzie Heinemann and Danny Joe Rose III
Dates: September 4 – October 14, 2023
Artist Reception: September 23, 6-8pm
Turn Me Into a River is an exhibition of recent paintings by Makenzie Heinemann and Danny Joe Rose III at Umbrella Gallery in Deep Ellum. Through their respective, experimental processes, Heinemann and Rose explore new ways to engage in minimal, abstract painting.
Heinemann uses water as her dominant medium, allowing landscapes and forms to reinvent themselves in the painting process. Rose adopts an intuitive method of hard-edge abstraction, relying on memory and impulse to layer their structural compositions.
The title, Turn Me Into a River, borrowed from Etel Adnan’s poetry, evokes the fleeting essence of life. Fluidity becomes an ideology, a desire to escape superimposed boundaries, until we are eventually returned to the Earth.
Selected show art will be available for purchase in the Umbrella Gallery store.
About the Artists
Makenzie Heinemann
Makenzie Heinemann is a Dallas-based visual artist. She completed her MFA in Studio Art at Florida State University and BFA in Painting at Arizona State University. Her work consists of large paintings on raw canvas, created on the floor through layers of water and water-soluble media. Water blurs the lines of figuration and eliminates the boundaries of representation in her paintings-although the landscapes and bodies still remain distantly recognizable. Heinemann currently teaches foundational art and maintains a home studio practice in the Junius Heights neighborhood of East Dallas.
“I make work about touch and space. I create through a very wet process on raw canvas, allowing fluid materials agency within the creation. My paintings remind me of our own permeable membranes and close intimacy with our environment and all other bodies in motion. The process of responding to the liquid movements confronts the tendency to fix ideas, bodies, and feelings into gridlocked systems of being. Through my work, I allow spaces, bodies, and emotions to be respective bodies in movement.”
Danny Joe Rose
Danny Joe Rose III is an artist and educator who has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad. They seek inspiration in their travels through sunsets, rock formations, and the various landscapes they’ve encountered. Experimentation plays a significant role in their process and has led Rose to adopt an intuitive method of painting, relying on memory and impulse. Rose’s minimalistic and hard-edged abstract works are created using acrylic, enamel, and oil pastels.
“My work explores themes of nature, inner worlds, and subliminal realities. My art is often inspired by fleeting memories of forms and colors, experienced both in the waking world and in my subconscious. I approach each new idea with an experimenter’s eye, leaving room for chance and risk along the way. The work that emerges is layered with colors, shapes, and textures.”