Katie Heck is often the protagonist in her work: she is the good fairy who, with her work and aura, offers to her fellows a magical potion meant to engender a change in their manner of thinking. Katie Heck's work seems constructed from the colourful innocence of childhood. Aside from the often masterly painted and drawn figures, there also appear various comic-book heroes with whom she grew up. They play the role of propitious spirits, and exercise a positive influence on the viewer's human brain. In addition to Lurchi and Yps, the figure and stories of Alfred Hitchcock inspire Katie Heck to put in train her own detective tales.These are presented in photo or video form, set in theatrical surroundings (?I regret-Ich Bedauerlich?, Heia Bube drueckt mich?). For the artist, Hitchcock also stands as symbol for the investigation into a reality where we are inevitably drawn, like it or not. The photographs are further worked with acrylic-markers and paint which add text to accompany the image and provide a pertinent message of sorts. The paintings, often in large format, are a compilation of classically painted human bodies and lines, flecks and texts, seemingly hurled upon the canvas. The spontaneity emerges in the confrontation between the overall composition with the perfectly painted bodies. Humour and Seriousness, and the translation of this body of ideas into an art of wholly masterful expression, is the foundation stone for the power emanating from Katie Heck's work.



Heck has been described as a ?post-feminist? because of her confrontational representation of the female body. Reminiscent of Rita Ackerman's portraits of corrupted innocence and Franz West's innuendo laden collages, Heck's monumental sized paintings draw from both personal experience and popular culture, creating a heightened sense of drama or glamour from the everyday. Often depicting herself and people she knows, her works operate as theatres of fantasy projection, using the diversity of painting as a means to engage with the potential of imagination.Her works are grounded in both formalism and fiction. Influenced by comics, mystery novels, and film, each painting plays out a possible narrative, using compositional elements to create suggestive links between her visual descriptions.