William E. F. Heeks, Jr. (born 1951), popularly known as Willy Heeks, is an American

abstract expressionist Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...

painter.

Biography

Heeks was born in

Providence, Rhode Island Providence () is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Rhode Island, most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. The county seat of Providence County, Rhode Island, Providence County, it is o ...

in 1951. During his childhood, he lived in both Providence and Bristol, Rhode Island. He participated in the Independent Study Program at the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

in 1973 and earned a BFA from the

University of Rhode Island The University of Rhode Island (URI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Kingston, Rhode Island, United States. It is the flagship public research as well as the land-grant university of Rhode Island. The univer ...

that same year. He studied in the

Tyler School of Art The Tyler School of Art and Architecture is part of Temple University, a large, urban, public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Tyler currently enrolls about 1,350 undergraduate students and about 200 graduate st ...

's Graduate Program in 1978, and received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from

Rhode Island College Rhode Island College (RIC) is a public college in Rhode Island, United States, with much of the land in Providence, Rhode Island, Providence, and other parts in North Providence, Rhode Island, North Providence. The college was established in 18 ...

in 1995. Heeks lived and painted in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

for many years before returning to his native Rhode Island in 1996. He currently resides there.

Awards & Grants

* Recipient: Artist Fellowship,

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the feder ...

, 1978 * Recipient: Visual Artist Fellowship,

Yaddo Yaddo is an artists' community located on a estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment.". On March ...

Saratoga Springs, New York Saratoga Springs is a Administrative divisions of New York#City, city in Saratoga County, New York, United States. The population was 28,491 at the United States Census 2020, 2020 census. The name reflects the presence of mineral springs in the ...

, 1980 * Special Projects Exhibition, P.S. 1,

Long Island City, NY Long Island City (LIC) is a neighborhood within the New York City borough of Queens. It is bordered by Astoria to the north; the East River to the west; Sunnyside to the east; and Newtown Creek, which separates Queens from Greenpoint, Brookly ...

, 1982 * Recipient: Harriet and Esteban Vicente Fellowship in Painting, 1984 * Recipient: Visual Artist Fellowship, Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, 1984 * Recipient: Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, 1985 * Recipient: Artist Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts, 1987 * Recipient: Artist Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts, 1989 * Recipient: Painting Award, American Academy & Institute of Arts & Letters, 1989 * Recipient: Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, Rhode Island College, 1995 * Recipient: Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, 1997 * Recipient: Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, 2004 * Recipient: Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant, 2004 The following museums and institutions hold Heeks’s work: * Anderson Collection at Stanford University, Stanford, CA * BP America, Cleveland, OH *

Brooklyn Museum of Art The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

, NY *

Butler Institute of American Art The Butler Institute of American Art (BIAA), located on Wick Avenue in Youngstown, Ohio, United States, was the first museum dedicated exclusively to American art. Established by local industrialist and philanthropist Joseph G. Butler, Jr., the ...

, Youngstown, OH *

Chase Manhattan Bank JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., doing business as Chase, is an American national bank headquartered in New York City that constitutes the consumer and commercial banking subsidiary of the U.S. multinational banking and financial services holding ...

, New York, NY *

Cleveland Museum of Art The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Located in the Wade Park District of University Circle, the museum is internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian art, Asian and Art of anc ...

, Cleveland, OH *

Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art is a former art museum in Washington, D.C., that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Founded in 1869 by philanthropist William Wilson Corco ...

Washington, DC Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and Federal district of the United States, federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from ...

DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park The deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum is a sculpture park and contemporary art museum on the southern shore of Flint's Pond in Lincoln, Massachusetts, 20 miles northwest of Boston. It was established in 1950, and is the largest park of its k ...

Lincoln, Massachusetts Lincoln is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 7,014 according to the 2020 United States census, including residents of Hanscom Air Force Base who live within town limits. The town, located in the MetroWe ...

* Dow Jones, Inc., New York, NY * Goldberg, Kohn, Bell, Black, Rosenbloom & Moritz, Chicago, IL * Henry Kaufman & Co., New York, NY * Industrial National Bank, Providence, RI * Inter-Metro Industries Corporation, Wilkes-Barre, PA * Jefferson Bank, Philadelphia, PA * Little Caesar's, Inc., Detroit, MI * Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, MI * Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA * Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA * Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY * Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI * Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA * Naples Museum of Art, Naples, FL * NYNEX, White Plains, NY * Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass * Piper and Marbury, New York, NY * Portland Museum of Art, Portland, OR * Progressive Corporation, Shaker Heights, OH * Prudential Insurance Company, Newark, NJ * Quad Graphics, Suffix, WI * Reader's Digest, Pleasantville, NY * San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA * Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln * Sherman & Sterling, New York, NY * Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA * Southeast Banking Corporation, Miami, FL * Peter Stuyvesant Foundation, Amsterdam, the Netherlands * Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL * Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ * University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ * Williams & Sonoma, Inc., San Francisco, CA

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Heeks, Willy 1951 births Living people Artists from Providence, Rhode Island American abstract artists University of Rhode Island alumni Temple University Tyler School of Art alumni Painters from Rhode Island Artists from New York City