MEET HEATHER CHONTOS
Preview the collection at ICFF or visit
Voltz Clarke Gallery on Monday 19th, 10 AM - 5 PM.
On a horse farm in the quiet hills of Alto Alentejo, Portugal, artist Heather Chontos paints in bold, instinctive gestures — her work a language of color, movement, and abstraction. Known for her dynamic compositions and fearless use of pigment, Chontos now brings her visual vocabulary into a new realm: a collaboration with Swedish design house LAYERED, where paintings become hand-knotted rugs.
For those who are not familiar with your work. How would you describe yourself and your practice?
”I am a self taught artist. I gravitate towards abstraction mostly because it feels like a secret language that I am fluent in and that I can translate through color and form in my work. I really enjoy languages and this feels like one that I truly understand. I have very busy hands, I like to make, to create, all of the time in an almost obsessive way. If I am not painting, I am making sculptures, building furniture or something for my home. I love to work with found materials and play with my medium as often as possible. I don’t like to limit myself or the possibilities that come from playing and experimenting.”
What inspires you in your work?
”I appreciate nature and all of its tiny nuanced details. I like to pay attention to my surroundings - the light, the shapes, the colors, the sounds. This is my greatest inspiration, to be present in the world I am in and share the beauty of it in the way that I see and feel it.”
How would you describe your creative process?
”I don’t really have a process, I just do. It comes and goes, and when I feel inspired I must respond to the desire to create. I truly can’t ignore it. It is like my body is saying ‘now’! And I have to do it, which can be rather inconvenient – just ask my children. I can’t tell you how many times we have been in the middle of something and I start rambling about an idea and have to go start it.”
What inspires you in your work?
”I appreciate nature and all of its tiny nuanced details. I like to pay attention to my surroundings - the light, the shapes, the colors, the sounds. This is my greatest inspiration, to be present in the world I am in and share the beauty of it in the way that I see and feel it.”
How would you describe your creative process?
”I don’t really have a process, I just do. It comes and goes, and when I feel inspired I must respond to the desire to create. I truly can’t ignore it. It is like my body is saying `now´! And I have to do it, which can be rather inconvenient – just ask my children. I can’t tell you how many times we have been in the middle of something and I start rambling about an idea and have to go start it.”
You grew up in New York's Hudson Valley and have lived in several places around the world. How have these experiences influenced your artistic development?
”I was taken on a trip when I was 13 to the south of France with the family I was babysitting for in New York. That trip opened a door in my brain that remained open. It became clear that experiencing new places and learning new languages was the only way to understand the greater, vast world out there. I grew up in a small place, but very close to NYC, so I had the best of both worlds, but it was still a small world, a closed one, and so I felt the need to explore as much as I could.”
“Art, to me is a creation of any kind that makes you feel something.”
How do you integrate your art into your home?
”It is impossible not to. I often paint on walls, or make sculptural fittings for shelves or light switches. I am currently making tiles from scraps of wood and painting on them for my bathroom, cutting each one and sanding its surface to be treated. I like to use what I have and create new ideas to incorporate into home.”
What does color mean to you, and how do you choose the colors you work with?
“Color is fearlessness to me and I don’t choose the colors, they sort of come to me, they choose me.”
How would you describe the design with LAYERED come about?
“I think the design came about very serendipitously. I belive that creative people with good intentions to make their works a more beautiful place find each other, especially when those people have good intentions and are following intuition and creative connection. We just sort of find each other and I am grateful for that gift of connectivity.”
Can you tell us about the three artworks behind the rug collection and what they mean to you?
“All of these works come from different time periods and locations from where I was working and living at the time. It actually shares a variation of processes in my work, spanning the use of antique book paper collages together or found fabrics, to the discovery of oil pigment sticks to paint with and straight up works on linen. They show a journey of discovery which is why its appropriate for them to be then translated in this way.”
Do you have a personal favorite in the collection?
“These works reflect different stages of my process, from creating collages from antique book pages to painting with oil pigment sticks directly onto linen. ‘Collage’ is one of my personal favorites — it was created from torn pieces of old film posters and pages from French magazines. I was gifted a suitcase full of antique papers in different colors and textures and pieced them together into a painting. The rug captures exactly that feeling — the textures, the richness of the colors, and their quality.”
What do you hope people feel or experience when they have one of your rugs in their home?
“I hope it brings them light, that it brings them joy and a sense of freedom to play and to express oneself. Making choices to have expressive pieces in your home is an individual's choice to not be afraid to do something different, to not be the same as everyone else and to play with your creativity in the space that you cherish.”
Would you like to continue exploring textiles and design in the future?
“Always.”
