I paint to interpret and preserve the spirit of experiences which have meaning to me. Three reoccurring themes are gender roles, the innate humor of life and the personalities of farm animals as metaphor for, and participants in, human experience. I am a lover of still life. My favorite tool is color. The brighter, bolder, and more luminous the better.
At age twenty Hefferlin was the only American during the Soviet Period to study at the Russian Academy of Fine Art (the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture) in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), where she completed the third-year curriculum. For twenty years since she has been a successful professional painter and scholar of Russian Impressionism. In 1998 Hefferlin co-authored Traditions Rediscovered: The Finley Collection of Russian Art, a richly illustrated work on contemporary Russian Impressionism. The Hunter Museum of American Art (Chattanooga, TN) presented a solo show entitled Farm Dreams of Hefferlin’s work in 2001. The Robert M. MacNamara Foundation (Westport Island, ME) selected Hefferlin as an Artist in Residence for six weeks in 2003. In 2006 the City of Chattanooga selected Hefferlin in a Tennessee state-wide competition to paint the official commemorative mural, Waterfront Celebration. Hefferlin won the Salmagundi Award of Excellence at the National Pastel Society of America's juried NYC exhibition in 2007. Recently Hefferlin completed a commission for three 12 foot x 9 foot murals for a large Tennessee protestant congregation, and opened Melissa Hefferlin, a mid-career retrospective of over 40 paintings at Southern Adventist University's McKee Library. Her paintings are held in over 40 private and institutional collections in the United States and abroad, including the Hunter Museum of American Art, the Museum Fund at the Russian Academy of Fine Art, Unum, Memorial Hospital and Seimens.
For the last twenty years Hefferlin has exhibited regularly at national galleries. She recently served as painting professor at Southern Adventist University and has guest lectured at the University of Tennessee, as well as teaching privately. She speaks English and Russian.
