American artist Heidi Mraz creates unusual paintings of famous cars
January 12, 2023Heidi Mraz literally fills the images of famous sports cars with creative meaning
Heidi Mraz’s car portraits are complex collages of hundreds of individual fragments, so her artistic process is quite complex. Creating works takes the artist a lot of time, as Heidi meticulously collects information about cars, communicates with owners, drivers and restorers, studies technical notes and magazine publications about sports cars.
For example, she owns a 120 x 180 centimeter portrait of the famous Porsche 906 race car, chassis number 906-134, owned by Paul Quilley, co-founder of the Monticello Motor Club private race track in upstate New York.
Viewing the work from a distance, we see a fast-moving orange sports car from the late 60s. However, if you come closer, it turns out that the image of the car consists of 1100 individual components, one way or another related to this classic car.
“Visually speaking, up close our brain has a blind spot. I use this phenomenon in my art to disguise the car, using color and independent fragments to distort perception,” said Mraz. “The magic happens when the viewer experiences a ‘sudden perception’ of a car hidden in a composition. The key to unraveling the image of the car is the distance. Stepping back far enough, or viewing a smaller version of the artwork in a convex rearview mirror, the painting transforms before your eyes, inviting the viewer to think of the automobile as an art of form.”
According to Heidi Mraz, with her works she wants to show the car as an important part of world culture.
Her latest work was a portrait of the racing Porsche 917 chassis 917-022, which became famous in Hollywood after its debut in the film “Le Mans” with Steve McQueen in the title role. Aerodynamics by Entomology is a colorful, layered work of art.
It features an image of the sports car created from approximately 1,000 hand-cut paper butterflies and other insects that match the iconic car’s blue and orange racing livery.
Such an interesting interpretation of the image of the Porsche 917 is “natural” in the vision of Heidi Mraz. One of the artistic meanings of the work is a metaphor about the lightness and transformation that you need to go through for development. Others are a reference to the dead mosquitoes and midges that are dotted with sports cars after each race. The third is the illusion of movement and dynamics of the inherently static image of the car.
At its core, Heidi Mraz’s work is fueled by her own passion for classic cars. This attracts sophisticated collectors who truly appreciate fine art and cars.
The artist’s work is driven by research and storytelling to celebrate and preserve automotive history on canvas. Her art is the result of months of research.
The technical aspect of creating an image is a complex and intricate manual process that involves hundreds of layers selected from books, catalogues, manuals, magazines, photographs and more. And the dizzying collages and mosaics include a variety of materials and textures, from paper to metal, which, when completed, create a unique visual retrospective on a single canvas.
An excellent example of H. Mraz’s work is Beneath the Surface: Bugatti del Lago Maggiore (2019), a mixed media set inspired by Mullin Automobile Museum’s famous 1925 “Lady of the Lake” Bugatti Type 22 Brescia that spent 75 years underwater. on Lake Maggiore.
The history of Bugatti and its rebirth was so unusual that Mraz decided to go to Lake Maggiore and dip her painted canvas in the very spot where the Bugatti rested.
The waters of the lake washed away some of the pigment from the canvas, creating a memorable backdrop for the Mraz montage, as colorful as the history of Bugatti. The collage itself is made from historical ephemera and automotive memorabilia, as well as images taken by Mraz, all of which are dedicated to the original Bugatti now in the Mullin Museum.
Mraz’s custom-made artwork is collected by some of the world’s leading automotive collectors, brands and museums.
Mraz’s last show was at Sotheby’s London as part of the London Motoring Week 2022 organized by the Royal Automobile Club.
In 2023, the work of Heidi Mraz is presented at the Motorcar Cavalcade event in Miami. An experimental art collection called “Driven to Abstraction” includes eight mixed media works on canvas:
• Abstract Porsche 917, size 30×40 inches (to be auctioned)
• Abstract Porsche 911, Size: 24×36”
• Abstract Ferrari F40, size: 30×60”
• Abstract Ferrari LaFerrari, Size: 30×40”
• Abstract BMW 328, Dimensions: 34×30”
• Abstract Lamborghini Countach, Size: 30×40”
• Bugatti Type 35 abstract, Size: 24×48”
• Abstract Bugatti Chiron, Size: 30×40”
A member of the Automotive Artists Guild, Mraz is also a temporary artist at the prestigious Torpedo Factory Art Center in Virginia. She has been the official poster artist for the Pinehurst Contest of Elegance in North Carolina and the Art in Motion Contest in New York, and is commissioned annually to paint the winning cars of the world famous Pebble Beach Contest of Elegance. She is a consulting curator for The White Collection in San Francisco and has been a judge at several major American competitions.
Mraz has written a book for a private collector about the 1951 OSCA MT4 Vignale and is currently filming a feature documentary titled AUTOMOBILE ARTS that goes behind the scenes of his history-inspired automotive assemblies.