Isabelle Heldenfels

Isabelle is a Brooklyn-based artist whose paintings explore the political nature of womanhood and family through fragmented, overlapping, and recontextualized portraiture. Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, Isabelle’s early years were marked by the dissonance she experienced between her own unconventional family structure and her very conservative religious environment. Isabelle holds a Bachelor’s of Architecture with a minor in Philosophy from Pratt Institute in 2023. Isabelle has exhibited her paintings at art clubs and galleries, including Salmagundi and 440 Gallery.

Artist Q & A

How has your experience growing up in a conservative religious environment influenced your perspective on family and womanhood in your artwork?

It’s healthy for young people to have something to rebel or push back against. Now that I have some distance from it, there’s a lot that I can appreciate about that environment, and it gave me the skills to be critical of any cultural consensus. I’ve had a more difficult time grappling with the less obvious dogmatism I’ve encountered as an adult. It’s much easier to take a stance about one side of a conflict. Still, the central theme in my artwork is dealing with the conflict as a whole and trying not to moralize any one attitude towards family or womanhood.

In your work, you speak about the tension between feelings of repulsion and fondness toward motherhood. How do you express these conflicting emotions through your art?

As a woman in my mid-twenties, I’m starting to see two paths in front of me. It almost feels like women have to exist in the context of motherhood, either accepting or rejecting it. I’ve found that conflicting ideas and feelings often need to exist in tandem; otherwise, they will lose their meaning. I represent this with multiple perspectives/positions of my subjects. I love finding a series of photos, all taken simultaneously and overlaying them on top of one another. Sometimes, I like faithfully representing the photos as objects, but other times, it’s interesting to represent the person or moment captured in all its complexity.

Follow the artist along: www.isabelleheldenfels.com
Isabelle is featured inside the Spring 2025 Edition of the Art Seen. Read the full interview and grab a copy today.