November 17, 2021
Faculty Scholar: Heather McPherson
![Heather McPherson, associate professor of art](https://news.providence.edu/files/2021/11/facultyscholarmcpherson-645x1024.jpg)
Through art students become more themselves.
Heather McPherson
TITLE: Associate professor of art
EDUCATION: BFA, Washington University in St. Louis; MFA, Rhode Island School of Design
EXPERTISE: Painting
![faculty scholar logo](https://news.providence.edu/files/2021/12/22000N-Fac-Sch.jpg)
NEWSWORTHY: McPherson received a Merit Fellowship in Painting from the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts in 2015. She will have an exhibition later this year at Take It Easy Gallery in Atlanta, a new gallery for avant-garde artists.
QUOTABLE: “In my work, I’m interested in mystical experiences and other forms of alternate reality. A painting can operate as the membrane between multiple conditions, where various senses of the real push against each other.”
ON TEACHING ART: “It’s remarkable that a pretty humble introduction to something like painting changes the way your brain works and how you move through time and space. In art, you’re basically coming up with new ways of thinking.”
ORIGINALLY FROM: Michigan
BEGAN TEACHING AT PC: September 2009
— Liz F. Kay