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Bause’s “Bunnies,” on view at Darke Gallery; photo courtesy of Darke Gallery

This Weekend in Art: Child’s Play!

by Evan Wetmore | Houston magazine | January 27, 2012

Artist Heather Bause, whose vividly colorful paintings are the subject of a new gallery exhibit in Houston this month, is living a child’s fairy tale.

She met her now-husband Holger when she was 16 and living in Germany as an exchange student. They fell out of touch, but he stayed on her mind. So nearly 10 years later she mailed him a letter—but sent it to the wrong address.

That could’ve been the anticlimactic end to the story. But the postman recognized the lad’s name, and walked across town to hand-deliver it to his mother. Upon receiving the letter, Heather’s prince flew to her hometown of Houston to reunite. They were married six months later.

Fast-forward another 10 years, and Heather and Holger, a software engineer, are still living a quaint, fanciful life. After a couple years back in Dusseldorf, Germany, they returned, settling into a Heights bungalow with cool amenities such as an Asian-themed outdoor beer garden and a sunroom studio in which Heather paints. “I took my art more seriously after moving back,” she says.

If there’s something in her pieces—bright depictions of animals and cottages and simple scenes—that, like the life of the artist, evokes a bit of fairy-tale fun, consider the source. The paintings in the UH grad’s The Stanford-Binet: The Modern Authority on Identifying Intellectually Deficient Children—opening with a reception Friday night, 6-9PM, at Darke Gallery (320B Detering St., 713.542.3802) and running through Feb. 24—are inspired by the Stanford-Binet “intelligence test” for kids.

The test—used since 1937 to gauge children’s intellect by asking them to explain incongruences in certain images, such as one of bunnies with only one ear—has for years intrigued Heather, who purchased an original set of test cards at a garage sale in college. And when her son Harry, now 7, was given the exam a few years ago, she began exploring her fascination through her art.

While she questions the usefulness of the actual test, in which kids may explain images differently based on their upbringing, she finds the imagery itself striking. “As deviant as the cards are, they have a simplicity and elegance,” says Heather, 36, a former graphic designer who teaches classes at the Art League and HGO’s arts outreach program. “I feel like they go back to the basics in a way, visually.”

Her color palette goes back to the basics, too. “Like the coloring book of a child,” says the freckled brunette. “They don’t have burnt umber. They have red and blue and green.”

“People will take what they want from them,” she adds of the pieces, which may stir feelings of nostalgia and, yes, childlike fantasy. “But there’s a universal appeal.”