In 1995, when she was 22, Rachel Heller had her first solo present, on the John Jones Artwork Centre in London. The exhibition bought out. This was not her first success, nor would it not be her final. In 1986, when Heller was 13, a collection of her drawings was proven to the tv grandee Jeremy Isaacs, who promptly purchased one. In 2006, her determine research Girl Sleeping in Mattress received the Hugh Casson drawing prize on the Royal Academy’s annual Summer time Exhibition. In 2015, Heller’s work was included in an exhibition on the Senator Group’s showroom in New York.
It’s not tough to see the explanations for her success. Heller, who has died of sepsis aged 49, had a selected bent for drawing, notably in pastel and chalk. Her vary was appreciable, from fast, deft Hockneyish works corresponding to Flowers Nonetheless Life (2016) to dense, compacted determine research corresponding to Sleeping Lady (2006) and Stand Prose (2011).
These final, in portrait or panorama format, typically have the texture of enamels or stained glass – discrete areas of vivid color, parallel to the image aircraft and welded collectively by expressive black outlines. Amongst her most memorable works was Home windows 2 (2001), whose flat, planar composition hovers between illustration and abstraction in a method that calls to thoughts early Twentieth-century German experimental portray.
What makes Heller’s success the extra extraordinary is that she had been born with Down’s syndrome. The destiny of artists with Down’s has tended to be consignment to that catch-all group often known as “outsider artists”, a time period invented to incorporate such variously deprived sub-groups because the psychotic, self-taught, imprisoned, naive and visionary. The American fibre sculptor Judith Scott, who additionally had Down’s syndrome, was proven and written about virtually completely by way of her situation. This was to not be the case with Heller.
Born in London, the daughter of the gallerist Angela Flowers and her companion (later second husband), the administration author Robert Heller, Rachel had proven indicators of expertise from an early age. Despatched to a particular wants main college, Holly Courtroom, close to her mother and father’ house in Highgate, she rapidly started to attract – animated, stick-figure folks merrily dancing and taking part in soccer. It was considered one of these, taken into the Flowers Gallery by her mom, that was purchased by Isaacs.
Her enthusiasm for drawing grew. At 16, Heller enrolled on to a particular wants artwork course at Hammersmith and West London School, the place she was inspired to take a seat artwork A-level. She went on to do a basis course on the Byam Shaw College of Artwork, taking a diploma in 2001. This was adopted by summer time programs on the Slade College of Nice Artwork in 2001 and 2003, and two years on the Prince’s (now Royal) Drawing College from 2005. She additionally went with a pal to sketch on the Victoria and Albert Museum each Sunday, typically working from non secular footage but in addition drawing fellow guests.
Having a mom who was on the centre of the London gallery world uncovered her to artwork at an early age. Amongst Heller’s buddies have been fellow artists who confirmed at Flowers Cork Avenue or Flowers East – Maggi Hambling and Sir Peter Blake have been each followers of her work – in addition to non-Flowers artists corresponding to David Hockney. “He signed my catalogue ‘To Rachel’,” Angela Flowers as soon as complained.
If she confirmed incessantly at her mom’s gallery, notably within the annual exhibitions of small-scale works known as Small Is Stunning, this didn’t, nonetheless, clarify Heller’s success elsewhere. Entries to the Royal Academy’s summer time present are submitted anonymously: her drawings have been chosen by the RA’s panel of judges six instances between 2002 and 2016. In her 40s, Heller additionally started to make sculptures – clay-based mixed-media works that had the identical merry density as her chalk-and-pastel determine drawings.
Like many individuals with Down’s syndrome, Heller’s speech was restricted. Her father felt that her drawings stood in for phrases; it was how she communicated, he mentioned, not least with him. Bob Heller was additionally insistent that his daughter shouldn’t be outlined by her situation, seeing her as a substitute as “merely a really amiable and barely eccentric individual”. Along with her style for denim jackets and a black fringe dyed pink, Heller may have been any voguish London artist, though she additionally had one thing of her mom’s magnificence.
After a decade with Parkinson’s illness, Bob died in 2012. He and Angela had moved out of London to Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire some years earlier than, and Rachel went with them. Latterly, she and Angela moved once more, to Ramsgate in Kent, to be close to different members of the family.
“It’s exhausting to think about really leaving her,” Flowers had as soon as mentioned of Rachel. “That’s when having a toddler with particular wants is hard.” As Rachel’s brother Matthew mentioned, mom and daughter had “by no means been aside for 50 years”. Angela Flowers died in August; Heller died 5 weeks later, the day earlier than her fiftieth birthday.
She is survived by her siblings, the youngsters of her mom’s first marriage, Adam, Matthew, Daniel and Francesca.
