Peggy Heitmann considers herself a visual artist and a word artist. She does not think of herself a natural born artist, as people say, with lots of innate talent. Growing up did not provide her with encouragement, or opportunity. Self-taught is how she describes her art and art process. Persistence and determination are two traits that have shaped her life and made her into the artist she is today.
Peggy grew up in the mill-town of Columbus, Georgia. In school, she always favored reading and writing over multiplication tables and long-hand division. Her mother often read poetry books to her in a soft, Southern voice orchestrating the words, pitching the vowels, and measuring the consonants into a melodic blend she craved to hear.
As for art, she says she got an A in eighth grade for staying quiet, not giving the teacher a problem, and for trying hard. When she peeked to see her classmates drawings, she says she wanted to hide out in the girl’s bathroom the entire class period. Instead, Peggy stayed, stuck out the embarrassment of her drawings like the one-dimensional Ferris wheels she chalked on black paper, and the anguish she endured over a pottery bowl she could never get to look like anything but a pink blob. She was one of those people who shied away from art after that experience telling everyone the typical, I can’t draw stick people.
Peggy goes on, My children all born in the late 80’s, became the impetus and the inspiration for scrapbooking, which eventually evolved into art making. She says she had long ago assigned herself the role of family historian and wanted to record the lives of her own children. I started slowly. In fact, I am not sure I realized the skills of design and color theory that I incorporated into my scrapbooking, but they were there. Intuitively, they were there.
Then in 2003, Peggy’s “art career” took another forward step toward the kind of art she makes today. She took an introductory class to the principles of altered books. Shortly after that class, she completed her first altered book, a tribute book to her mother. The skills required for altered books paralleled scrapbooking nicely. She confides she loved making altered books because they were so 3-D. I could make images leap off the page, have life and vibrancy and I could use magazine images, paper napkins, note card images—anything, absolutely anything so I would not have to draw. She reminds us she had been telling everyone including herself that she could not draw stick people.
Nevertheless, she persisted this way for years in making altered books. She thinks her books looked good. She always got compliments on her excellent use of color, and a few commissions.
But after awhile, she wanted more. She says, I thought to myself one day, why should I limit myself with that kind of thinking. Of course, I can do whatever I set my mind to do. She wanted to be what she considered to be a “real artist.” She decided she wanted to draw.
So at age 59, she started drawing lessons with Tim Merrill in Wake Forest. Every Sunday for three years, she drove 45 minutes from her home in Raleigh near “Big Wake Med” Hospital on New Bern Avenue to downtown Wake Forest and then back home again—and she repeats For Three Years! Peggy is including a poem about the drawing process:
Drawing Class
I begin my lessons
with Bargue drawings
that emphasize exactness.
The image in my head
I sketch with precision
and flawless ease.
But my undisciplined mark making
does not match the images.
Instead, my drawings look like scribbles
searching for a recognizable form.
Charles Bargue used simple lines
created hidden perspectives,
soft contours juxtaposed
against jagged lines,
concepts of light
and shadow playing
against each other
in complex ways.
Renderings that look
so sensuously abundant
become for me lessons
to practiced discipline
training my hand
and mind to work
together, to glide
over the paper
to create illusions
and bring my subjects
to life like poetry.
Peggy notes she started writing and publishing poetry about 30 years ago. Since then, she has developed her own “style,” her own “voice” as a Southern poet.
Today elements of poetry, drawing, painting, color, persistence intermingle in her work. The one element of the art making that she did not anticipate is the Joy that comes with turning a white piece of paper into an object of beauty, delight, humor or whichever of the emotions she wishes to evoke.
Peggy laughs, Oh, my goodness, if I had known art could bring me so much pleasure and joy I would have started at age three!!!
Today, she knows her strengths and weaknesses when it comes to art. Most importantly, she says she knows her preferences. Peggy has no interest in becoming an illustrationist. She says that she appreciates drawings so realistic one could comb the hairs of a man’s beard, but that is not her style. She much prefers altered realism like the one shown here.
She loves working in many different media: watercolor, acrylics, paper collage, fiber arts. Currently she is working on a project called “Arting Your Journal” adding elements of color, texture, text, pictures to a journal that she fills with words, thoughts, emotions she will later turn into poems.
She says another important lesson she has learned is “Do SOMETHING Every Day”. On any given day, if you look for Peggy, she can be found painting, drawing, collaging, sewing or writing—but most likely if you were the proverbial fly on the wall, you would find her working on as many as she can squeeze into the day. And she laments over the time that must be spent on dishes and laundry, which she says take away from the passions of her life.
Retirement is on the horizon for Peggy. Her day job at Wake County Human Services ends March 11, 2022. After a rest, she hopes to work at a local DWI agency providing art instruction. Whoo hoo.
Imagine that. The kid who couldn’t became the adult who can and then goes on to teach. I couldn’t ask for more. And I am grateful for everyone who has helped me along the way!
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