SPRINGDALE A Big, Bright Connection

SPRINGDALE — Heidi Carlsen-Rogers knows that some viewers won’t understand her artwork.

She accepts that - along with the possibility that they won’t like it.

“A great conversation can come out of a negative comment,” says the painter, whose large-scale abstracts are on show this month at the Arts Center of the Ozarks in Springdale. “If you, as the artist, are open to the conversation, you can almost certainly help (viewers) find something they can connect with. And then it becomes a very different conversation.

“I really want to open people up to art.”

Love it or hate it, no one can ignore Carlsen-Rogers’ paintings. They’re bright - and they’re big.

“I like to say they are ‘human-size’ pieces that a viewer can walk up to and into as they view them,” she says.

They’re also as interesting as they are difficult to explain. Abstract art, Carlsen-Rogers admits, is “complex and a bit intimidating.”

“To me, abstract work reveals an artist’s unique point of view,” she says. “It is a great opportunity for others to see the world through someone else’s creative vision.”

Carlsen-Rogers says she loves “the challenge of” and “the freedom in” abstraction.

“On one hand, the process is very heavy on the side of problem solving, arranging space and finding solutions that need to be worked out in order to develop a strong painting,” she muses. “On the other hand, there is such an absolute excitement in the spontaneous, intuitiveand experimental surprises that happen while working abstractly.”

It’s likely that Carlsen-Rogers discovered those problem-solving skills in the corporate world, working for a visual display company in Ohio.

“I wouldn’t trade for a minute what I learned,” she says. “One of my bosses had this incredible, entrepreneurial mind. The first thing he taught me was, ‘Never say no. Always tell the client we can do it - and we’ll figure out how later.’ I definitely take that into the studio with me.”

But Carlsen-Rogers found the freedom in art much earlier. She was a small child, she says, when she “went crazy” with red markers on paper she’d placed on her bed.

“I made great red tie-dyed sheets,” she recalls. And the trouble she got into didn’t faze her. “I was the ‘orange sheep’ in a family of non-artists.”

It wasn’t until she moved to Northwest Arkansas three years ago that Carlsen-Rogers got the chance to pursue her passion full time, and the ACO exhibit is her first solo show.

The idea of viewers seeing herwork is “both scary and fun,” she says.

“My biggest goal really is to have a shared visual experience with the viewer, but I know people will take away different things from viewing my art,” she says.

“It really depends on what perspective they bring to the show. But I am hoping they will connect in their own unique way, and that it will be a very positive and inspiring connection.”

That desire for dialogue will be fulfilled in Carlsen-Rogers’ new job as a gallery guide for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

One of her goals, she says, is to convince people that art is more than painting, drawing and sculpture.

“Everybody is an artist,” she says. “We all have the ability to do something creative, whether it’s mending fence, serving coffee or strategizing a business plan. That gift is in all of us, and it needs to be shared.”