Growing up in Parkland in the 1990s, watercolor artist Kimberly Heise, 32, was enthralled with the natural beauty around her. She remembers an abundance of pine trees and wooded hammocks, and she gazed onto a forest of trees from her bedroom window. It was an idyllic time that resonates with her to this day.
“My love of nature comes from my childhood home in Parkland,” Heise says. “I spent a lot of time in nature as a kid.”
After graduating from Florida Atlantic University with a BFA in painting in 2016, Heise moved to Boca Raton, Delray Beach, and Miami and felt disconnected from nature. She discovered watercolors and decided to focus on scenes from nature as a way to reconnect to the natural world.
“Art became a way for me to feel connected with the natural world when access to habitats became sparse,” Heise says. Specializing in Florida native plants and animals, her style is a combination of hyper-realism with the accuracy of scientific illustration.
Now back in Parkland, Heise rides her bicycle through Covered Bridge Park, 6 Acre Wood Park, and other trails where she shoots photographs of flowers, plants, or wildlife that she later paints.
Collaborating with nonprofits, Heise creates original artwork for websites, trail signs, videos, guides, magazines, products, logos, and research presentations. “I’m partial to working with organizations that work to preserve our natural habitats and ecosystems,” she says.
Heise painted the Florida bonneted bat, a species of bat only found in South Florida and one of the most endangered mammals in North America, to bring awareness to conservation efforts.
She paints two hours each day in her home studio and devotes time to her newsletter and website, social media, emails, and other nonartistic, but necessary, tasks.
Heise says she is doing exactly what she envisioned. “Being able to sustain myself doing what I love is something I’ve wanted since my 20s,” she says. “Doing this full-time is amazing.
“I enjoy the process of painting,” Heise says “Envisioning beautiful things and bringing them to life is very satisfying.”
She became involved with the Florida Native Plant Society (FNPS), and its educational programs helped shape her work.
“Kim’s a wonderful woman, generous, friendly, and easy to work with,” says Mark Kateli, FNPS statewide president. “She’s a budding naturalist who showcases native plants and animals to raise awareness for our environment and has a bona fide talent and an astute hand in drawing animals and plants.”
For their conference, Heise donates a digital art piece and this year was featured on the front cover of The Palmetto, the group’s magazine.
Heise admires artists John James Audubon, Teagan White, and wildlife artist and illustrator Zoe Keller. “The more you learn about native species, the more exciting it becomes,” she says.
“Lawn weeds,” a native plant and host for butterflies, excite her. “Learning about these species helps me connect to Florida,” Heise says. “Florida is not just palm trees—there is so much joy and beauty here.
“It’s hard to see a native plant such as Chapman’s Cassia (a woody shrub) or Coreopsis (tickseed) and not get excited,” says Heise.
“Learning about these native habitats has made me a happier person,” she says.
Most recently, Heise completed a coloring book for the Everglades Foundation and has collaborated with the Miami nonprofit Bound by Beauty and created a field guide with 17 illustrations of native plants that host butterflies.
“This was one of my most enjoyable and meaningful projects,” the artist says.
“We have been fortunate to collaborate with Kim on our wildlife sanctuary, our field guide to wild plants that host butterflies, and others,” says Mary Benton, founding director of Bound by Beauty. “She has an affinity for the native flora and fauna and an extraordinary ability to bring them to life with watercolor.”
Benton notes, “Everybody who sees her posters is drawn to them more closely, which is our intent in educating people about the beauty and importance of nature—in this case, ‘lawn weeds.’”
Heise is also one of nine artists commissioned by West Palm Beach’s ArtLife Public Art program—”9 Artists 9 Spaces”—to create a temporary public work with the theme of play.
Titled “Birds at Play,” the mural features images of herons and egrets, whistling ducks, gallinule, kites and butterflies, painted buntings, and laughing and herring gulls. The artwork will be installed at the Mandel Library later this summer.
“I’m excited to be part of this project,” says Heise, who is creating the imagery in watercolor in separate panels, then Photoshopping them together. The finished image will be printed on vinyl and installed in the entranceway to the library by forklift.
Additionally, her exhibit “Florida Naturally Wild: Watercolor Painting by Kim Heise” runs through Aug. 26 at Kampong National Tropical Botanical Garden in Miami.
Going forward, Heise would love to have her work at Art Basel or a gallery and to have the ability to “cross-pollinate” (to use a nature term) between the fine art and conservation worlds. She says her best work is created with the intention of it being fine art.
“I’m thrilled when I set an intention for the work and the work rises to that intention,” she says. “I’m most proud of having my art appreciated for the beauty of the art itself.”
To follow Heise’s latest works, sign up for her email newsletter at KimHeise.com/newsletter or follow her on Instagram and Facebook at KimHeiseArt. Original paintings and prints are also available for sale on her website.
To learn more about the exhibit at Kampong National Tropical Botanical Garden, visit ntbg.org/events/florida-naturally-wild.
