Bio

Aristotle reminds us that

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”

From the time we clutch our first thick crayon, we as humans claim the unalienable right to create, to express what can’t be voiced with words. Creating art helps Heidi Darr-Hope understand what it is to be human.

Having worked as a professional artist and teacher for over 40 years, her approach to art-making and teaching are well honed. Both are influenced by her enthusiastic passion for travel, her quest to understand her nighttime dreams and her longing to find the quiet in the roar. Her art and her teaching are intuitive expressions of the universal search for meaning. This quest has taken her across the world studying spiritual rituals in India and Bali, Mexican death traditions, Jungian Dream psychology, Tibetan mandalas, and expressive writing. Creating Brave®, Darr-Hope’s workshop series, weaves together her life experiences and professional art techniques into an interdisciplinary approach that uses art as the vehicle to promote understanding and healing.

“The making, the crafting of art, soothes, stimulates, quiets, engages, frustrates, calms and stirs my soul. That I never know what will come from this process is terrifying and electrifying. It makes me feel alive.

My ever-evolving techniques -collage, drawing, painting, printmaking, mixed media assemblage, sculpture, mosaics…meld with my ever-growing materials - acrylic paints, watercolor, colored pencils, oils pastels, found objects. All of this comes together either on paper and canvas or in a mixed media assemblage.

The teaching, the crafting of Healing Icons® and Creating Brave®, undergird, strengthen and support why I am an artist. To offer visual art as a soulful, healing, spirit-filled language is a privilege and a humbling honor.

My inspiration flows intuitively from the stuff of life

Revealing the remarkable within the ordinary

Leading me towards my truest spiritual self

Urging me to see the entire world before I die

Encouraging me to learn deeply from words of poets and thinkers

Inspiring me to understand my ceaseless nighttime dreams

Helping me find the quiet within the roar

All this intertwines, fueling the images I create and the manner in which I teach.

My marriage to Art, Dreams, and my Travel Muses continually teach me to slowdown, pay attention and listen - always leading me deeper into my most intimate journey inward.”