On Monday, December 13, 2004 at 7:00 pm the Rotunda Gallery will present the latest in the acclaimed "Ask…" Series, featuring Conceptual Realism artist Julie Heffernan. Admission is free, and reservations are required. Call 718-875-4047 x11. The event is presented in conjunction with the Gallery's current exhibition Conceptual Realism, which is on view through December 31.

Heffernan received her MFA in painting from Yale University and currently maintains a studio in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The recipient of numerous fellowships, including a National Endowments for the Arts Fellowship and a Fulbright-Hayes Grant, she has exhibited nationally since 1985. She is one of the most renowned painters working today in Brooklyn. As critic David Cohen described her work in the New York Sun, "Technique is inconsequential if not harnessed to vision; Ms. Heffernan's most marvelously is. In golden, glowing aristocratic interiors that date anywhere from the High Renaissance to the Rococo, mysterious dramas are played out: Gorgeously attired ladies spontaneously combust, birds descend in flocks, alchemical landscapes sprout from bedsheets."

Heffernan brings to the table both impressive technique and a thoughtfulness about her work that is accessible to fellow artists, critics and art curious alike. As she describes her work, "I became very interested in what narrative painting could mean in an age where we look to film and video for our visual stories….When any kind of story is well told the reader or viewer will, at a point, find herself in the realm of the imagination as the so-called "real" world falls away and we take on the identity of the character around whom the events take place, assuming his or her body. Our minds create the linkage that allows us to care. In painting, this occurs through the tactile imagination, the ability to feel through our eyeballs."

The ROTUNDA GALLERY, housed in an award-winning space designed by Smith-Miller + Hawkinson, showcases the work of Brooklyn artists. The ROTUNDA GALLERY’s educational programs reach 7,000 students each year with gallery visits and in-school art making projects. The ROTUNDA GALLERY is a project of the not-for-profit BRIC/Brooklyn Information & Culture, Inc..