Willendorf Venus

This canvas charts Heath’s efforts to draw, whilst blindfolded, a plaster cast of the Willendorf Venus (one of the world’s best-known primitive sculptures.) Heath moved his finger along the outline of the figure, trying to make identical movements with a pencil in his other hand. After he thought he had gone all over the figure, he rotated the sculpture through 90 degrees and started again. He questions some basic assumptions about making a painting: the importance of control over spontaneity; the role of cultural icons such as the Willendorf Venus in Western art; even the degree to which painting is a visual activity at all. The painting won a prize in the 20th John Moores exhibition in 1997.