Heather Straka

Heather Straka
Born1972
EducationElam School of Art, Auckland
OccupationArtist

Heather Straka (born 1972) is a New Zealand artist, based in Auckland, who primarily works with the media of painting and photography.[1] Straka is well known as a painter that utilises a lot of detail.[2] She often depicts cultures that are not her own, which has caused controversy at times. Her work engages with themes of economic and social upheaval in interwar China, the role of women in Arabic society and Māori in relation to colonisation in New Zealand.[3] Eventually, the figure became important in Straka's practice and she began to use photographs as the starting point for some of her works and "Increasingly too the body feminine has become her milieu".[4]

  1. ^ Trish Clark Gallery. "Heather Straka". Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  2. ^ Eye Contact Art Forum (29 March 2010). "Andrew Paul Wood on Heather Straka's Photographs".
  3. ^ Priscilla Pitts, Andrea Hotere (2017). Undreamed of ... 50 Years of the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship. Dunedin: University of Otago Press. pp. 194–197.
  4. ^ "Heather Straka". The Central. Retrieved 16 February 2019.