Irish Mancunian illustrator, Heffernan was drawn to art from an early age. Originally self-taught, she has a first class BA(hons) in Illustration, and has graduated with a Masters in Illustration at the University of Edinburgh with distinction.

At age 24, she is continuing to build a growing portfolio of work surrounding the catharsis in documentation of memory, honouring moments of the everyday, and seeking a unison between the natural world and a contemporary identity.

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With her informative years were split between Manchester and the idyllic Irish countryside of Mayo, it becomes apparent in her work, showing a fusion of brutalist linework and organic forms and subjects, drawing upon natural, pastoral, and industrial themes. Taking influence from everyday experience and the associated memories allows for interrogation into intricate details and hidden beauty of the moments we overlook.

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Heffernan’s work focuses on trauma, illness, grief, and rebuilding. Using a broad range of mediums, Heffernan creates a universe of her own in her work, rebuilding from the debris left behind by suffering and death, creating honest illustrations, with a hopeful undertone.

 

Transgressing from symbolic folk imagery into computerised embroidery depicting scenes of home care, Heffernan combines these to form powerful, eclectic images – the stark aesthetic of a receipt alongside a detailed illustration of a country cottage, or the detailed textures of an embroidery depicting cold, clinical scenes from a hospital bedside.

Distilling a moment or refining a message, Heffernan is inspired by illustration’s potential to record the colloquial and its application as a documentational method of notetaking through art. Heffernan sees our lives as our own tapestries, built of inherited identity from our experiences, and our ancestors, with acknowledging the connection between our bodies and the earth, can we begin to grow.

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Email: c.heffernan @ sms .ed.ac.uk