Living in Portugal's Serra São Mamede natural park with her daughter and a small menagerie of horses, dogs, and a few chickens who've clearly decided they run the place, Heather Chontos has built a life that looks nothing like the polished, gallery-circuit version of being an artist. And yet art threads through almost everything she does. For Chontos, it isn't a career so much as a way of processing existence - every idea she has seems to demand a physical form before she can let it go.
That sense of immediacy comes through in the materials she works with. Her practice moves across sculpture, wood, canvas, linen, and paper, often incorporating found and repurposed materials alongside paint. Pieces of old wood, fabric, paper, and other unexpected elements can become part of her compositions, giving her work a distinctly tactile quality without relying on a traditional canvas alone.
Now, take a closer look at 30 artworks by Heather, spanning paintings, works on paper, pieces on wood, and sculptures assembled from found materials. Chontos also has a large solo exhibition coming up in January at Berg Gallery in Stockholm, making this a fitting moment to explore her work.
The artist's process is just as instinctive. Chontos has described herself as incredibly impatient, explaining that ideas can arrive as what she calls a “visual assault” and become difficult to ignore. Once an idea enters her field of discovery, she says it must become something, even if it changes and transforms along the way. She works through her questions and curiosities by giving them a physical manifestation, allowing each idea to find its own direction.
